Wi 


iliii 


Righthandedness  and 
Lefthandedness 

WITH 

CHAPTERS  TREATING   OF  THE    WRITING 
POSTURE,  THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD,  ETC. 


BY 


GEORGE  M.  GOULD,  M.D. 


PHILADELPHIA  c^  LONDON 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 
1908 


Gq 


coptkight,  1908 
Bt  George  M.  Gould 


Published  May,  1908 


Printed  by  J.  B.  Lippincott  Company 
The  Washington  Square  Press,  Philadelphia,  U.  S.  A 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

Introduction ''' 

I.    The  Origin  of  Righthandedness 21 

II.    Why   is  a   Particular   Child    Righthanded   or 

Lefthanded  ? 45 

III.  The  Rule  of  the  Road 61 

IV.  Study  of  a  Case  of  Two-handed  Synchronous 

Writing 93 

V.  Visual  Function  the  Cause  of  Slanted  Hand- 
writing ;  its  Relation  to  School  Hygiene, 
School  Desks,  Malposture,  Spinal  Curvature, 
and  Myopia 146 

VI.    The    Pathologic    Results    of    Righteyedness 

and  Lefteyedness 182 

VII.    A  Patient's  Struggle  for  Right-eye  Function  195 

VIII.    The  Nomenclature  of  Dextral,  Sinistral,  and 

Attentional  Organs  and  Functions 200 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FIG.  PAGE 

1.  The  Hand  in  the  Writing  Posture  as  Usually 

Ordered,  but  Not  Practiced 150 

2.  A  Common  but  Incorrect  Method  op  Writing.  . .   154 

3.  Medieval   Copyist   Writing  with  the  Paper  at 

A  Sharp  Angle 155 

4.  The  Usual  Writing  Posture.  . .    156 

5.  A    Malposture    Pictured    and    Described    but 

Never  Practiced 158 

6.  Another  Form  of  Malposture 158 

7.  View    of    the    Writing  -  field   as    Seen  by  the 

Writer,  with  Skewed  Paper,  and  Body  and 
Head  Turned  to  the  Left 158 

8.  The  Writer  Bending  Forward,  with  the  Eyes 

Directly  Over  the  Writing 158 

9.  Holding  the  Pen  Between  the  First  and  Sec- 

ond Fingers,   thus   Lessening  the  Need  of 
Bending  Head  or  Body 158 

10.  The  Hand  Held  in  a  Strained  and  Unnatural 

Position,   to   Secure  a   Better  View  of  the 
Writing 158 

11.  The  Normal  or  Hygienic  Posture  of  the  Body 

AND  Head  while  Writing 160 

12.  A  Hygienically  Perfect  Position 161 

13.  Oriental    Method    of    Holding    the   Writing  - 

brush  164 

14.  A  Lefthanded  Malposture 172 

15.  Specimen    of  the   Writing  of  the  Declaration 

of  Independence 174 


INTRODUCTION 

The  theories  that  have  been  advanced  as  to  ' 
the  origin  of  righthandedness  and  lefthanded- 
ness  are: 

1.  A.  natural  provision.  (Sir  Charles  Bell, 
and  others.) 

2.  The  left-sided  location  of  the  heart.  (Re- 
ferred to  by  Wilson.) 

3.  A  greater  supply  of  nerve  force  to  the 
muscles  because  of  an  earlier  and  greater  de- 
velopment of  the  brain  upon  one  side.  (Pro- 
fessor Gratiolet.) 

4.  Obstruction  to  the  flow  of  blood  in  the 
vena  cava,  by  the  pulsation  of  the  aorta,  (Dr. 
Barclay.) 

5.  Inspiration  produces,  mechanically,  a  su- 
perior efficacy  of  the  muscles  of  the  right  side. 
(Professor  Buchanan.)  This  theory  is  based 
upon  the  observation  of  the  anatomic  peculiari- 
ties of  the  liver,  lungs,  etc.,  and  their  supposed 
influence  upon  the  center  of  gravity  of  the 
body.  (So  far  as  pertains  to  the  center  of 
gravity,  the  theory  has  been  adopted  by  Dr. 
Struthers  and  by  Dr.  AUis.) 

7 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

6.  The  center  of  gravity  theory.  The  influ- 
ence of  the  weight  of  the  viscera  of  the  two 
sides  of  the  body,  upon  the  position  of  the 
center  of  gravity.  (Dr.  Struthers,  accepted  by 
Buchanan,  Allis,  etc.) 

7.  The  origin  of  the  subclavian  arteries,  the 
left  before  the  right  in  the  lefthanded,  with 
superiority  of  blood-supply  to  certain  struc- 
tures.    (Professor  Hyrtl.) 

8.  The  development  of  one  cerebral  hemi- 
sphere more  than  the  other.     (Wilson.) 

9.  The  Topsy  theory — "just  growed." 
These  theories  merit  little  argmnent  in  re- 
buttal. No.  3  and  No.  8  are  essentially  the 
same,  and,  of  course,  are  mere  avoidances  of 
an  explanation.  No.  2,  No.  4,  No.  5,  No.  6  and 
No.  7  are  not  based  upon  facts,  and  contain 
fallacies  of  observa'feon,  rendering  them  at  least 
of  insufficient  reach  and  validity.  No.  9  is 
almost  as  good  as  any  or  all  of  the  rest,  and 
we  are  left  with  the  frank  confession  of  Dr. 
Struthers,  that  the  mystery  "has  baffled  satis- 
factory explanation." 

In  a  large  way  and  notwithstanding  a  certain 
number  of  exceptions,  it  is  an  illuminating 
truth  of  biology  that  "the  ontogeny  repeats  the 

8 


INTRODUCTION 


ph3dogeny. ' '  We  can,  therefore,  never  explain 
the  phases  of  development  through  which  an 
organism  passes  except  by  knowing  the  corre- 
sponding stages  of  evolution  of  the  line  of  its 
ancestral  forms.  If ,  therefore,  we  ever  solve  the 
mystery  of  righthandedness  andlefthandedness, 
it  will  be  by  the  study  of  the  conditions,  habits, 
necessities,  etc.,  of  the  ancestral  types  when 
righthandedness  and  lefthandedness  arose.  The  -'' 
infant  of  a  few  months  shows  no  signs  of 
preference  in  the  use  of  the  hands ;  it  is  simply 
nondextrous,  or  ambisinistrous.  Almost  as 
soon  as  it  exhibits  any  conscious  effort  toward 
skillful  use  of  the  hands  it  usually  begins  to 
show  signs  of  righthandedness.  Before  it  walks, 
before  it  is  one  year  old,  righthandedness  is 
clearly  pronounced.  Baldwin  (Pop.  Sci.  Mo., 
Vol.  XLIV.)  has  demonstrated  experimentally 
that  it  is  plainly  established  as  early  as  the 
seventh  or  eighth  month.  The  period  in  phylo- 
genous  savage  life  to  which  this  of  the  infant 
coiTesponds  must,  therefore,  be  that  of  the 
earliest  phase  of  humanization.  The  animals, 
even  the  anthropoid  apes,  do  not,  so  far  as  I 
have  observed,  exhibit  it.  Vierordt  says  that 
parrots  grasp  food  with  the  left  foot,  by  prefer- 

9 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

ence,  and  that  lions  strike  with  the  left  paw. 
Livingston  is  quoted  as  thinking  ''all  animals 
are  lefthanded."  I  suspect  this  is  all  error, 
because,  as  a  rule,  it  would  disadvantage  rather 
than  help  in  the  animalian  struggle. 

Since  any  sort  of  consciousness  of  the  facts 
has  existed  the  wisdom  of  righthandedness  has 
been  emphatically  exhibited:  (1)  In  the  word 
dexterity,  which  is  the  prized  and  honored 
quality  of  savage  and  civilized  man;  (2)  in  the 
secondary  meaning  of  the  word  sinister — un- 
lucky, ill-omened,  evil;  (3)  in  the  persistent 
training  of  all  lefthanded  children,  by  parents, 
teachers,  etc.,  to  make  them  like  the  rest  of  the 
righthanded  world.  These  three  facts,  the 
residue  of  the  psychologic  habits  of  ages,  per- 
sistent in  all  history,  crystallized  and  embedded 
in  the  very  language  itself  which  chronicles  all 
mentality,  help  to  give  us  the  clue  to  the  solu- 
tion of  the  riddle. 

Skillfulness,  ''handiness,"  expertness  of 
sense  and  act,  were  the  sole  means  whereby  the 
savage  could  win  his  place  in  the  world,  domes- 
ticate animals,  conquer  in  all  sorts  of  conflicts, 
supply  himself  with  food,  clothing,  house,  etc. 
It  was  necessary  that  one  hand  should  be  chosen 

10 


INTRODUCTION 


to  do  the  dextrous  or  more  skilled  tasks,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  exercise  develops  and  per-- 
fects  function,  and  one  would  learn  to  be  more 
skilled  and  '^ handy"  with  one  hand  than  with 
both.  The  savage  required  no  treatise  on  logic 
nor  even  any  conscious  reasoning  to  teach  him 
this  primary  lesson.  His  food  and  life  de- 
pended upon  his  learning  it. 

But  that  it  was  an  acquirement,  that  the  law 
and  necessity  were  not  exceptionless,  that  it 
was  due  to  no  absolute  fatalism  of  anatomy  or 
physiology,  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  so 
large  a  proportion  of  lefthanded  children  and 
adults  exist  in  all  races  and  times.  The  educa- 
tion of  lefthanded  children,  whereby  their 
writing  center,  naturally  dextrocerebral,  is  by 
forced  training  and  long  habit  transferred  to 
the  left  cerebral  hemisphere,  is  another  demon- 
stration that  no  inherent  neurologic  or  psycho- 
logic law  governs  the  location  of  the  cerebral 
center  or  its  peripheral  outworking.  When  the 
occasions  arose  in  the  humanization  process, 
and  the  demand  for  the  differentiation  of 
cerebral  mechanisms  was  made,  the  plastic 
brain  on  either  side  could  take  up  the  work. 

And  pure,  or  untrained,  lefthanded  persons  are 

11 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

to-day  as  expert  as  their  rightlianded  fellows. 
All  that  is  needed  to  explain  righthandedness  in 
94  percent  of  children  is  some  ancestral  savage 
onstom,  habit,  or  necessity,  widely  prevalent, 
which  inclined  to  the  use  of  the  right  hand  and 
eye  for  one  or  two  exceptionally  intellectual 
tasks.  The  inheritance  of  aptitude,  the  force 
of  custom,  and  the  necessities  of  the  struggle 
for  existence  would  certainly  fix  the  persistence 
of  the  peculiar  excellence. 

•  We  must  not  forget  that  the  somewhat  sud- 
den and  clear  preference  of  righthandedness 
and  lefthandedness  of  the  child  of  to-day  was  in 
the  far-away  ancestral  line  spread  out  over  long 
periods  of  time.  A  year  or  two  of  the  child's 
life  represents  thousands  of  years  of  slow 
acquirement  and  habit. 

Again,  it  should  be  remembered  that  even  in 
our  preferences  and  habits  it  is  only  in  a  few 
things  that  one  hand,  etc.,  has  the  greater  ex- 
pertness,  accuracy  and  rapidity.  It  is  often 
rather  a  division  of  functions,  a  differentia- 
tion of  ability,  than  a  unique  one.  In  the  right- 
handed  the  left  hand  does  many  tasks  of  as 
great  or  greater  importance,  and  with  equal 
or  superior  skill,  as  the  right.    In  eating,  the 

12 


INTRODUCTION 


fork  is  now  more  used  than  the  knife ;  in  gun- 
ning, the  left  hand  is  given  the  vastly  more 
important,  difficult  and  onerous  task;  in  chop- 
ping,  hoeing,    shoveling,    picking,    lathe-work, 
railway  locomotive  engineering  and  other  tasks 
the  left  arm  and  hand  often  execute  the  chief 
and  more  expert  tasks.    Especially  noteworthy 
is  the  playing  of  the  violin,  'cello  and  bass  viol. 
The  "fingering"  is  done  with  the  left  hand,  and 
forms   a  striking  reversal   of   dextrality,   be- 
cause it  is  by  all  odds  the  function  requiring 
more  manipulative  skill,  accuracy  and  rapidity. 
I  do  not  know  that  the  fact  itself  has  ever  been 
observed  and  stated,  but  certainly  the  reason 
of    this    strange    contradictory    practise    has 
hitherto  escaped  the  attention.     It  is,  I  think, 
due  to  righteyedness.    With  few  and  easily  ex- 
plained exceptions  righthandedness  is  a  result, 
or   a  concomitant,   of  righteyedness.     If  the 
violin,   'cello  and  viol  were  fingered  with  the 
right  hand  the  learner  would  be  greatly  handi- 
capped by  the  foreshortening  which  would  exist 
as  his  dextral  eye  glanced  along  the  neck  of  the 
instrument  straight  in  front  or  below  this  eye. 
The  learner  must  see  his  fingers  and  gain  pre- 
cision in  placing  them  by  careful  visual  esti- 

13 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


mates.  But  when  placed  sinistrad  the  right 
eye  sees  the  neck  of  these  instruments  and  the 
lingers  at  an  angle  which  permits  more  accurate 
observation,  estimates  of  distances,  etc.,  than 
would  be  possible  if  the  instrument  were 
fingered  with  the  right  hand.  In  those  instru- 
ments necessarily  held  in  the  median  line,  some 
wind-instruments,  the  flageolet,  hautboy,  etc., 
the  right  hand  asserts  its  selective  and  more 
difficult  task.  When  the  hands  are  not  seen  at 
all,  as  in  tlie  flute,  fife,  etc.,  the  right  again  has 
its  choice.  No  pupil  with  lefthandedness  estab- 
lished can  learn  piano-playing  easily.  I  know 
of  one  who  was  a  great  lover  of  music  who 
failed  utterly  after  long  perseverance. 

There  are  other  cautions  to  be  emphasized 
relating  to  the  acquirement  of  righthandedness 
by  the  savage:  Nearly  all  the  actions  which 
we  now  call  righthanded  were  in  primeval  times 
to  him  unknown.  This  is  especially  true  of 
three  things.  Knives  and  forks  have  only  been 
used  in  eating  for  a  few  hundred  years.  He  ate 
with  his  fingers,  and  one  may  suspect  he  used 
the  left  as  much  as  the  right  in  this  way.  The 
Mussulman  custom  and  its  reason  are,  of 
course,  both  modern.      Secondly,  the  modern 

14 


INTRODUCTION 


gun  and  revolver  had  not  been  devised.  The 
bow  and  arrow,  the  spear,  boomerang,  club,  etc., 
could  be  used  as  well  with  the  left  hand  by  the 
lefthanded.  Thirdly,  writing  was  unknown,  or 
relatively  so,  and,  as  we  have  now  learned,  that 
locates  the  speech  center  in  the  cerebral  hemi- 
sphere opposite  the  writing  hand.  It  is  thus 
evident  that  righthandedness  in  the  savage,  at 
the  time  when  it  began  to  become  habitual,  must 
have  been  at  best  only  partial,  incomplete,  and 
for  a  very  few  acts.  The  lefthanded  arrow- 
chippers,  basket- weavers,  club-wielders,  sewing- 
women,  etc.,  even  if  more  numerous  relatively 
than  in  civilized  life,  would  perhaps  attract  little 
or  at  least  less  attention  than  now,  and  would 
be  less  discouraged,  surely  less  taught  to  re- 
verse the  natural  inclination. 

In  default  of  systematic  banding  and  military 
training,  also,  the  lefthanded  spearmen,  bow- 
men, swordsmen  and  clubmen  might  not  have 
much  attention  directed  to  themselves  and 
sometimes  might  have  an  advantage  over  their 
single  and  righthanded  adversaries,  e.g.,  in  tilt- 
ing. The  preference  in  heraldry  for  dextral 
quarterings,  etc.,  is  by  no  means  uniform. 

But  there  was  one  overlooked  factor  which 

15 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

was  doubtless  decisive  in  setting  up  the  trend 
toward  rightbandedness.  Tbis  was  tbe  develop- 
ment of  sign-language  synchronously,  and  even 
preceding  that  of  spoken  language.  Tbe  in- 
effaceable relics  of  this  long  and  arduous  period 
exist  in  present  day  language,  plainly  in  many 
savage  tribes  and  customs,  but  the  most  striking 
proof  is  displayed  in  our  so-called  Roman  nu- 
merals. The  fingers  of  the  hand  held  up,  or 
counted  off,  were  beyond  question  the  begin- 
nings of  arithmetic,  the  means  of  barter,  the 
method  of  stating  the  fundamental  fact  of 
number  requisite  in  all  thinking  and  doing. 
Military  and  intertribal  dealings,  especially 
made  the  custom  powerful  and  even  sacred. 
One  finger  was  the  origin  of  our  figure  one,  the 
second  equaling  tivo,  etc.,  up  to  five,  or  V,  which 
fork  was  made  by  the  thumb  stuck  up  opposite 
the  first  I.  When  the  counting  was  more  than 
five,  the  other  hand  was  made  to  represent  the 
first  five,  the  digits  being  added  up  to  ten,  when 
two  forks  were  used,  or  the  crossed  thumbs, 
which  constituted  X.,  or  ten.*     The  impressive 


*  It  does  not  matter  with  which  hand  the  first  numbering, 
in  some  cases,  was  done;  the  intelligent  attention  must  have 
been  director  to  the  action  with  the  dextral  or  spear  side. 
Homer  and  the  earliest  Greek  vases  show  the  right  was 
inl  66pv ,  the  spear  side,  and  kn'  aawida  the  shield  side. 

16 


INTRODUCTION 


ceremonies  of  warring  and  bartering  tribes 
would  stamp  with  distinctive  approval  the  hand 
used  in  the  sign-language,  and  henceforth  it 
would  become  the  honored  one,  the  stamping 
and  writing  hand,  and  in  time  the  sword-hand. 
The  right  was  chosen  as  the  sign  and  numbering  ^ 
hand  because  the  left  was  naturally  used  for 
the  highly  important  task  of  guarding  the 
sinistrally-placed  heart  with  the  shield.  War 
is  the  substance  of  all  early  history  and  of  the 
savage  sons  which  preceded  all  history.  Dr. 
Flint  {The  Sun,  April  17,  1904)  says  that  deaf- 
mutes  may  have  an  aphasia  that  prevents  the 
use  of  the  right  hand  in  the  sign-lang-uage. 

All  the  progress  of  evolution  of  the  higher 
forms  of  animal  life  has  depended  upon  eye- 
sight. Self-motility  and  intellect  are  condi- 
tioned upon  ocular  function,  and  civilization  is 
possible  only  by  perfection  of  ocular  function. 
What  no  Darwinian  has  ever  seen  is  that  the 
survival  of  the  fit  has  been  for  the  greater  and 
controlling  part  the  survival  of  the  ocularly  fit, 
and  the  exclusion  of  the  unfit  has  been  of  the 
ocularly  unfit.  The  development  of  visual  per- 
fection has  conditioned  the  genesis  and  advance 
of  the  higher  biologic  forms  at  every  step.    The 

2  17 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

fact  is  self-evident  when  one  thinks  of  it,  for 
all  action  is  dominated  and  permitted  by  the 
sight  of  the  external  conditions  in  which  move- 
ment must  take  place.  There  is  a  striking  and 
demonstrating  proof  of  all  this  in  the  embry- 
ology of  the  eye  as  contrasted  with  the  general 
embryology  of  the  hmnan  fetus.  The  forma- 
tion of  the  eye  is  well  under  way  in  the  second 
or  third  week,  but  the  differentiation  of  the 
motor  muscular  tissues  is  not  clear  until  some 
four  months  later.  More  significant  still  is  the 
fact  that  the  eye  is  a  part  of  the  brain, — the 
brain  itself  comes  out  to  see,  the  retina  being 
cerebral  substance  told  off  to  a  special  periph- 
eral and  extracerebral  function  and  placing. 
This  is  so  with  no  other  organ  of  the  body,  and 
it  not  only  demonstrates  that  vision  and  intel- 
lect are  united  in  a  common  work,  but  that  they 
are  united  in  being,  one  in  origin,  one  in  nature, 
one  in  function,  one  in  history. 

That  which  is  the  nearest  man's  soul,  the 
most  psychic,  the  most  immaterial  of  the  doings 
and  creatings  of  his  mind,  is  language.  Its 
organ  is  single  not  double,  its  center  of  origin 
and  control  is  monolateral  in  one  side  of  the 
brain,  and  not  as  in  the  case  of  the  hands,  eyes, 

18 


INTRODUCTION 


etc.,  bilateral,  or  located  in  tlie  two  sides  of  the 
brain.    If  it  is  to  act  with  celerity  and  precision 
in  war,  game,  art,  hunger,  or  love,  it  must  be  as 
closely  contiguous  and  in  as  immediate  rela- 
tions to  other  centers  of  co-ordinate  and  inter- 
dependent function  as  possible.    Thus  an  act, 
muscular,  emotional,  or  volitional  requiring  a 
number  of  co-operating  centers  must,  so  far  as 
possible,  be  near  and  closely  connected  with  the 
organ  issuing  the  final  command.    Locate  the 
speech  center  in  the  left  half-brain  and  the 
centers  of  the  more  dextral  of  the  bodily  func- 
tions also  located  there  will  act  more  immedi- 
ately   and    accurately    than    if    some    of    the 
necessary  data  were  furnished  by  centers  in  the 
right  half-brain.     This  is  the  fundamental  con- 
dition and  necessity  of  righthandedness.    But 
righthandedness    originates    in   righteyedness.)-^ 
Thus  general  dextroexpertness  comes  into  be- 
ing.   Vice  versa,  of  course,  in  the  case  of  the 
location  of  the  speech  and  writing  center  in  the 
right  half-brain  and  the  resultant  lefthanded- 
ness  and  sinistroexpertness.     The  four-footed 
vertebrate  with  his  right  eye  governing  dextral 
function  and  dextral  dangers,   furnished  the 
biologic  habit  of  righteyedness  to  general  dex- 

19 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

tral  function  and  of  lefteyedn'ess  to  general 
sinistral  function,  so  that  the  prehuman  organ- 
ism brought  to  anthropology  the  unfinished 
mechanism  which  finally  developed  righthanded- 
ness  (or  lefthandedness)  in  our  savage  ancestors 
by  means  of  war,  barter  and  sign-language. 

Eighthandedness  and  lefthandedness  has  too 
long  been  considered  as  a  riddle,  a  mystery  for 
dilettante  writers,  at  best  as  a  matter  of  scien- 
tific play.  But  they  or  their  co-ordinated  func- 
tions are  the  most  serious  of  practical  concerns, 
the  source  of  infinite  suffering,  of  innumerable 
tragedies  and  even  suicides.  Every  physician 
and  especially  every  ophthalmologist,  abso- 
lutely every  orthopedist  and  neurologist  must 
in  the  future  concern  himself  vitally  with  the 
matter.  The  20,000,000  patients  with  lateral 
curvature  of  the  spine  are  products  of  morbid 
visual  function.  And  they  are  begotten  by  the 
schools  so  that  the  pedagog  may  never  rid  him- 
self or  herself  of  an  awful  duty.  In  every 
school  room  of  fifty  pupils  ten  are  scoliotics  and 
at  least  twenty  are  also  suffering  from  terrible 
and  life-wrecking  diseases  caused  by  eyestrain. 

The  ''ambidexterity"  crank  is  deserving  of 
a  more  severe  punishment  than  any  other  of 
our  many  criminally  insane. 

20 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE   ORIGIISr    OP    EIGHTHANDEDNESS.* 

'  Deprived  for  a  time  of  the  use  of  his  right 
hand,  Carlyle  was  struck  both  by  the  vast  im- 
portance and  the  mystery  of  righthandedness. 
He  forthwith  pronounced  tlie  question  of  its 
origin  as  'one  "not  to  be  settled  and  not  worth 
asking  except  as  a  kind  of  a  riddle. ' '  He  was  ' 
more  correct  in  saying  that  righthandedness  is 
' '  the  very  oldest  human  institution  that  exists, 
indispensable  to  all  human  co-operation  whatso- 
ever; no  human  cosmos  possible  to  be  ever 
begun  without  it."  Since  the  entry  in  Carlyle 's 
diary  was  made  hundreds  have  despaired  or 
failed  in  the  same  manner  to  see  any  possible 
solution  of  the  "riddle,"  and  all  the  time,  to  an 
extent  which  Carlyle  could  never  have  dreamed, 
the  extension  of  the  influence  of  righthanded-^ 
ness  has  penetrated  more  profoundly  and 
dominatingly  into  all  the  departments  of  prac- 
tical, commercial,  manufacturing,  and  social  life. 
There  is  no  medical  science  or  practice  which 


*  From  the  Boston  Medical  and  Surgical  Journal,  Vol.  clvii, 
No.  18,  pp.  597-601,  Oct.  31,  1907. 

21 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

can  ignore  it;  the  law  mnst  take  constant  cog- 
nizance of  it;  mechanics  and  tool-making  are 
dominated  by  it;  in  every  evolution  or  drill  of 
ships  or  soldiers  it  is  obeyed  and  kept  in  mind ; 
and  to  railroads  it  dictates  wrecks  and  millions 
of  dollars  of  expense  or  savings.  It  makes  or 
mars  the  calling,  or  failure,  the  success,  hap- 
piness, or  suffering  of  far  more  persons  than 
is  usually  suspected,  and  scarcely  one  of  us  is 
unaffected  in  some  way  for  good  or  ill  by  our 
dextral  or  sinistral  complications,  co-ordina- 
tions and  inco-ordinations.  There  are  over  three 
million  lefthanded  persons  in  our  country,  and 
they  are  either  excluded  or  handicapped  in 
many  occupations. 

But  Carlyle's  insoluble  ''riddle"  and  the  per- 
plexities of  hundreds  of  writers  is  now  easily 
cleared  up.  The  origin  of  righthandedness  and 
lefthandedness  is  plain,  and  equally  so  the 
history  of  the  puzzle  of ' '  the  Rule  of  the  Road. ' ' 
PBarbaric  custom  and  war  are  the  source  of 
,  righthandedness;  medicine,  including  cerebral 
anatomy  and  physiology,  is  able  to  explain  the 
development  of  general  righthandedness  upon 
which  rest  all  the  mysteries  of  the  Rule  of  the 
Road. 

22 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

Beyond  question  the  beginnings  of  right- 
liandedness,  and  of  general  rightsidedness,  date 
historically  to  primitive  war  and  barter  and  the 
tally-stick.  The  first  differentiation  of  function 
in  the  use  of  the  hands  doubtless  arose  in  telling 
off  the  left  hand  and  arm  to  hold  the  shield 
which  should  protect  the  heart  side  of  the  body 
from  the  adversary's  blows.  This  hand  thus 
became  known  as  the  shield  hand.  Except  in  a 
few  very  modern  tasks  the  fact  has  dictated  that 
the  left  hand  has  been  generally  the  holding 
hand,  chosen  instinctively  for  the  more  passive 
or  holding  tasks,  those  requiring  the  less  deli- 
cate or  expert  proficiency.  Custom  and  lan- 
guage have  long  crystallized  into  an  acceptance 
of  the  usage  and  even  gone  so  far  as  to  call  the 
unlucky  and  misfortunate  and  awkward  by  the 
words  left,  sinister,  sinistral,  gauche,  etc.  Con- 
versely, the  right  hand  was  chosen  for  the 
positive  fighting  task,  and  called  the  spear  hand, 
and  some  of  the  most  prized  virtues,  dexterity, 
dextrousness,  etc.,  were  named  after  the  culti- 
vated abilities  of  the  right  hand.  The  oldest 
Greek  vases,  and  Homer,  even  the  cave-men, 
demonstrate  the  existence  of  the  distinctions  of 
shield  hand,  spear  hand,  and  of  righthanded- 

23 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

ness  generally.  In  Xenoplion's  '^ Anabasis" 
the  usages  had  become  the  routine  of  all  mili- 
tary drill  and  discipline.  In  Smith's  ''Diction- 
ary of  Greek  and  Roman  Antiquities"  under 
the  caption  ' '  Exercitus, ' '  may  be  found  illustra- 
tions of  the  distinction  emphasized.  For 
instance : 

"The  facing  to  the  right  was  always  the  usage,  because 
if  the  evolution  were  performed  in  the  face  of  an  enemy, 
the  shielded  side  could  be  presented  toward  him.  .  .  . 
Similar  maneuvers  took  place  if  the  enemy  appeared  on  the 
left,  though,  as  this  was  the  shielded  side  of  the  soldiers, 
and  the  danger  was  consequently  less,  it  was  frequently 
thought  sufficient  to  keep  the  enemy  in  check  by  means  of 
the  cavalry  and  light  troops.  One  point  that  a  general  had 
to  be  on  his  guard  against  was  the  tendency  of  an  enemy, 
when  advancing  im  fdUayyo?^  to  sheer  off  towards  the 
right,  each  man  pressing  closer  to  his  right-hand  neighbor 
in  order  to  protect  his  unshielded  side,  so  that  the  right 
wing  frequently  got  beyond  the  left  wing  of  the  enemy." 

■  The  Roman  army  exercitus  fixed  the  working 
of  righthand  and  lefthand  orders  down  to  the 
most  minute  details,  and  at  West  Point  to-day 
the  thousand  peculiarities  of  military  drill  and 
custom  and  command  are  exemplifications  of 
the  consequences  of  shield-hand  and  spear-hand. 

24 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

Xenoplion  is  still  in  command  of  every  army  in 
the  world.  Within  the  memory  of  living  men 
companies  of  American  militia  often  had,  at  the 
end,  tail,  or  left  of  the  battalion,  a  lefthanded 
soldier,  placed  there  in  order  that  his  musket, 
carried  in  his  l^ft  instead  of  his  right  hand, 
might  not  clash  with  the  right  hand  and  its  held 
gun  of  his  next,  righthanded,  fellow. 

In  the  word  digit,  and  in  the  Roman  nu- 
merals, and  in  the  five  strokes  or  cuts  of  the 
tally- stick,  we  have  the  most  abundant  and  abid- 
ing testimony  as  to  the  origin  of  righthanded- 
ness  and  the  location  of  the  speech  center, 
in  the  left  half -brain.  Counting,  writing  and 
speaking  are  single  functions  united  into  act 
by  the  volition,  the  seal  and  ratification  of  will- 
ing. By  all  savages  for  all  time,  in  bargaining, 
the  right  hand  has  been  held  aloft,  and  one, 
two,  three,  or  four  fingers  shown  and  flung  at 
the  opposed  bargainer.  The  gesture  is  always 
that  of  throwing  the  fingers  or  numbers  at  him. 
The  whole  hand  is  flung  more  energetically, 
when  five  is  intended,  i.e.,  the  letter  V  of  the 
fork  of  the  thumb  and  first  digit.  The  scratches 
on  the  tally-stick  tell  the  same  story  and  the 
diagonal  thumb  line,  denoting  five,  run  across 

25 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

four  digits  from  upper  left  to  lower  right  hand 
corner,  indicates  the  thumb  or  fifth  number. 
And  so  on,  to  ten  or  X,  the  crossed  or  doubled 
thumbs  and  to  all  other  numbers.  A  close  study 
of  the  Chinese  and  Japanese  numerals  con- 
vinces that  the  Roman  system  described,  ancient 
as  it  is,  is  but  a  late  offshoot  of  far  older 

r 

oriental  usage,  in  general  features  the  same  the 
world  over,  and  ages  before  history  began. 

The  significance  of  these  illustrations  of 
primitive  and  persisting  sign-language,  gesture- 
language  and  counting-language  is  that  as  they 
are  executed  by  the  right  fingers  and  right 
hand,  the  motions  of  these  fingers  and  this  hand 
are  instituted  and  innervated  by  "a  center" 
or  collection  of  brain  cells  in  a  certain  sj)ot 
(called  Broca's  convolution)  placed  in  the  left 
side  of  the  brain.  With  one  finger  held  ujd,  or 
more,  or  the  whole  hand,  with  one  or  more  cuts 
in  the  tally-stick  made,  there  was  (and  as  the 
schoolboy's  lip-motion  in  learning  to  read  dem- 
onstrates) the  spoken  word,  one,  two,  three,  etc. 
Speech  is  almost  the  sole  and  surely  the  chief 
muscular  function  that  is  single,  not  double, 
and  which  must  be  executed  from  a  single  in- 
itiating center  of  power  and  control.     It  is  the 

26 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

fusion  of  all  bilateralism,  of  all  bodily  and 
mental  components  and  diversities  into  the 
unitized  resolve  which  the  whole  body,  mind  and 
future,  must  obey.  *  For  the  righthanded  man 
this  center  of  nervous  origin  and  control  is  not 
in  the  right  half-brain,  nor  in  both  half -brains, 
but  only  in  the  left.  There  also  are  the  nervous 
or  ganglionic  mechanisms  of  memory,  of  writ- 
ing, of  the  expert  vision,  of  hearing,  of  leg-and- 
foot  motion,  which  may  be  or  are  necessarily 
bound  up  with  the  righthand  deeds,  the  laryn- 
geal and  vocal  acts  issuing  in  language,  or 
resolve,  or  social  determination.!  The  two 
halves  of  the  brain  are  remarkably  independent 
and  separated  from  each  other,  as  a  thousand 
facts  of  physiology,  disease  and  injuiy  to  brain- 
substance  show.  Therefore  an  injury  to  the 
speech  or  writing  centers  or  to  the  centers  of 
motion  of  the  righthand  fingers  of  a  right- 
handed  person  at  once  paralyzes  or  destroys, 
partly  or  wholly,  the  power  of  speech,  of  writ- 
ing, of  memory,  the  significance  of  words,  etc. 
A  similar  injury  to  or  disease  of  the  corre- 
sponding parts  of  the  right-brain  has  no  effect 
whatever  upon  these  functions  and  acts.  The 
child  is  born  with  no  discoverable  differences 

27 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

of  cerebral  structure  or  substance  of  the  two 
cerebral  hemispheres,  and  none  ever  appears 
thereafter.  But  about  the  sixth  month  of  life 
the  babe,  which  will  naturally  become  a  right- 
handed  one,  begins  to  put  forth  the  right  hand 
instead  of  the  left  to  grasp  an  object,  and  the 
cerebral  matter  about  the  left  third  frontal  con- 
volution, however  unchanged  or  like  that  on  the 
right  side,  is  thenceforth  increasingij^  and  ex- 
clusively used  to  control  the  organs  of  speech, 
of  writing  and  of  memory.  Just  here  comes 
into  view  the  overlooked  fact  that  the  degree 
of  righthandedness,  of  general  dextroexpert- 
ness  and  even  of  vocal  and  mnemonic  function 
is  different  in  different  persons,  and  also  that 
it  is  all  a  question  of  growth  and  progressive 
development.  In  the  grunting  savage  or  peas- 
ant the  speech  center,  although  located  in  the 
left-brain,  must  be  tremendously  more  simple 
than  in  a  musician  who  knows  by  heart  and 
sings  and  plays  a  thousand  pieces  of  music,  who 
speaks  and  writes  a  dozen  languages,  etc.  The 
differentiation  and  complication  of  the  cerebral 
mechanism  whence  spring  all  the  acts  begins  in 
infancy  with  simple  homogeneity,  and  grows  in 
complexity  with  every  year  of  added  life.  With 

28 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

each  added  year  of  differentiation  the  expert- 
ness  grows,  and  it  grows  because  the  single 
cerebral  mechanism  has  become  more  and  more 

\ 

complex.  Therefore  with  each  added  year  the 
impossibility  of  educating  the  corresponding 
centers  in  the  right-brain  becomes  greater.  The 
ambidextery  sillies  must  therefore  begin  with 
infants  if  they  are  to  succeed  in  making  a 
dextral  child  of  one  naturally  sinistral.  More- 
over, historically,  the  trend  in  all  human  beings 
is  for  them  to  become  more  and  more  exclusively 
and  despotically  either  righthanded  or  left- 
handed,  so  that  with  each  added  generation  the 
impossibilitv  of  ambidexteritv  will  increase. 
Even  now  the  attempt  to  reverse  the  law  as 
existing  in  school  children  is  both  useless,  ex- 
pensive of  life  and  in  reality  impossible.  No 
attempt  can  wholly  succeed;  none  should,  and 
the  partial  successes  produce  cripples  and  awk- 
wards,  if  not  disease  and  tragedy.  The  most 
foolish,  impertinent,  ignorant,  expensive,  re- 
sultless  and  maiming  fad  is  that  of  the  ambi- 
dexterity mongers.  They  do  not  know  what 
they  want,  do  not  know  that  they  cannot  suc- 
ceed, do  not  know  that  they  curse  the  victim  of 
any  partial  success.    In  infancy  the  lefthanded 

29 


EIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

child  may  be  trained  to  be  a  riglithanded  one, 
but  never  to  be  an  ambidextrous  one.  Why 
should  a  violinist  bow  equally  well  with  both 
hands,  and  finger  equally  well  with  both  hands  ? 
"Why  should  he  write  equally  expertly  with  each 
hand? 

The  fatuity  becomes  amazing  with  the  recog- 
nition of  the  fact  that  righthandedness  is  nec- 
essarily bound  up  with  righteyedness,  with 
rightearedness,  with  rightfootedness.  To  train 
the  child  to  be  ambidextrous,  eyes,  ears  and 
feet, — all  must  be  trained  to  equal  expertness 
in  all  tasks,  and  this  is  ludicrously  impossible. 
We  are  usually  as  righteyed  as  we  are  right- 
handed,  as  any  one  can  prove  by  looking  at  the 
image  of  the  finger  or  a  pencil  held  upright  a 
foot  before  the  eyes.  Alternate  opening  and 
closing  of  each  eye  demonstrates  (with  some 
exceptions  understood  by  oculists)  that  the 
right  eye  is  unconsciously  the  one  chosen  to 
''fix"  the  image. 

The  reason  for  this  general  choice  of  the 
arm  and  hand,  of  eye,  of  ear,  and  of  leg  and  foot 
for  conjoined  expert  tasks  is  easily  recognized. 
It  insures  a  speedier  and  more  accurate  sjTithe- 
sis  of  the  cerebral  functions  which  must  be 

30 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

co-ordinated  into  a  single  act  and  result.  The 
independence  of  the  two  halves  of  the  brain 
makes  it  necessary  that  the  bodily  organs  most 
commonly  acting  together  and  most  interde- 
pendent should  be  incited  and  controlled  by  the 
cerebral  centers  in  close  contiguity  and  in  one 
side  of  the  brain.  There  is  a  measurable  slow- 
ness of  nerve-current  transmission  (between 
100  and  200  feet  per  second),  and  even  if  the 
connecting  links  ('' commissural  fibers")  be- 
tween the  two  brain-halves  were  much  more 
intimate  and  numerous  and  short  than  they 
are,  rapidity  and  accuracy  of  correlation  and 
unification  in  willed  act  would  be  impaired,  and 
the  safety  and  decision  of  the  entire  organism 
imperiled,  if  one  or  two  of  the  coacting  centers 
were  in  opposite  hemispheres.  That  in  the 
righthanded  all  these  centers  of  origination 
and  control  are  in  the  left,  and  in  the  lefthanded 
in  the  right  half-brain,  is  an  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  the  location  of  the  speech  center  and 
writing  center  exclusively  in  one  or  the  other. 
Writing  and  speaking  are  closely  interde- 
pendent, both  in  origin  (gesture,  sign-language, 
counting,  Roman-numeral  or  digit- throwing) , 
and  in  all  subsequent  history  and  evolution. 

31 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

Their  centers  of  origin  and  control  must  there- 
fore be  in  close  neighborhood  and  intunate 
union.  Vision  which  preceded  and  accompanies 
all  must  therefore  be  in  the  same  side  of  the 
brain.  This,  of  course,  holds  as  to  hearing  and, 
although  less  differentiated,  to  the  associated 
leg  and  foot  movements. 

An  astonishing  and  interesting  consequence 
of  all  this  almost  draws  itself.  It  becomes 
plain  that,  in  the  righthanded,  intellectual  life 
and  progress  are  by  means  of  the  mechanisms 
of  the  left  cerebral  hemisphere.  There  is  no 
intellect  as  we  understand  it  except  through 
speech,  vocal  and  written,  and  the  instruments 
of  this  function  exist  only  in  the  left-brain  of 
the  righthanded,  and  in  the  right-brain  of  the 
lefthanded.  Mentality  of  the  dextral  therefore 
lives  preponderatingly  in  and  through  the  left 
half-brain.  The  fact  strongly  emphasizes  and 
capitally  illustrates  the  great  biologic  law  that 
all  progress  consists  in  differentiation  of  func- 
tion. In  the  evolution  of  civilization  each  bit 
of  cortical  brain  substance  is  being  told  off  to  a 
certain  peculiar  office.  That  large  parts  are 
still  without  particular  and  discoverable  duties 
argues  plainly  for  the  great  progress  and  dif- 

32 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 


ferentiation  of  function  in  tlie  future  of  hu- 
manity's advance.  The  areas  of  the  more 
unused  half -brain  (the  right  in  the  righthanded, 
the  left  in  the  lefthanded)  occupied  by  the 
speech  and  writing  centers  in  the  more  active 
half,  show  microscopically  no  failure  or  weak- 
ness of  part  or  mechanism.  If  they  did 
heredity  would  long  since  have  eliminated  the 
lefthanded,  and  the  right  half-brain  would 
become  changed  and  atrophied  except  in  those 
parts  originating  the  muscular  activity  of  the 
right  side  of  the  body,  etc.  Possibly,  the  recur- 
rence itself  of  the  two  or  more  percent  of  left- 
handed  persons  prevents  the  atrophic  tendency 
in  the  righthanded.  Lefthandedness  is  there- 
fore probably  not  decreasing  (probably  increas- 
ing), and  the  forming  organisms  of  the  infant 
may  become  lefthanded,  etc.,  with  no  want  of 
perfection  in  any  part.  The  emergency  finds 
the  inherited  mechanism  ready  for  its  task. 

In  this  light  and  by  reason  of  these  facts 
one  sees  that  materialism  is  absolutely  disal- 
lowed. The  speech  and  writing  mechanisms 
of  the  brain  do  not  as  such  exist,  even  func- 
tionally, in  the  fetus  or  newborn  child.  They 
are  creations,  slow  creations,  during  childhood 

3  33 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


and  youth.  At  any  time  they  are  instruments 
and  mechanisms,  expertly  manufactured  by 
something  not  themselves,  used  as  a  piano-key 
and  string,  and  as  all  the  keys  and  strings,  as 
the  piano  itself,  by  something  that  plays  upon 
them  just  as  a  pianist  plays  upon  his  instru- 
ment. That  the  instrument  can  or  does  make 
itself,  that  the  player  and  piano  are  indis- 
tinguishable and  of  one  substance,  are  the  most 
unwarranted  of  pseudophilosophic  assump- 
tions. Far  better  than  either  philosophy  or 
religion,  physiology  thus  demonstrates  the 
existence  of  the  life  and  spirit  of  man,  apart 
from  the  material  of  his  body  and  its  mech- 
anisms. 

There  is  much  obscurity  and  misconception 
as  to  what  really  is  the  nature  and  fact  of  right- 
handedness,  righteyedness,  etc.  The  crudest 
blunders,  for  instance,  exist  even  in  learned 
monographs  as  to  rightfootedness.  In  dressing, 
a  dextral  man  begins  by  first  putting  his  left 
foot  in  the  left  trousers-leg;  he  places  his  left 
foot  upon  the  spade  or  shovel;  he  jumps  from 
the  right  foot ;  kicks  with  the  left ;  the  boxer  and 
prizefighter  places  the  left  foot  and  arm  for- 
ward; the  rider  vaults  a  horse  from  the  "near" 

34 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

side,  and  with  the  left  foot  in  the  stirrui3  first ;  * 
the  entered  apprentice  mason  ''steps  off  with 
the  left  foot  first;"  all  soldiers,  since  time 
began,  start  the  march  by  first  advancing  the 
left  foot.  All  of  these  things  are  conclusive 
proofs  of  rightfootedness,  and  not  of  leftfooted- 
ness,  as  m^y  claim.  The  right  foot  and  leg 
are  unconsciously  chosen  as  the  strongest,  the 
most  steady,  best  co-ordinated,  most  expert  ones, 
with  which  the  spring,  the  determining  or  force- 
giving  factor,  is  made.  It  is  of  course  nonsense 
that  animals  are  rightfooted  or  leftfooted.  The 
differentiation  could  only  arise  with  sign-lan- 
guage and  counting,  and  animals  do  not  make 
gestures  or  count.  No  doubt  that  rightfooted- 
ness in  man  is  not  so  far  advanced  as  right- 
eyedness  and  righthandedness ;  there  are  more 
exceptions,  less  differentiation  of  function,  etc., 
but  it  is  essentially  jDresent,  and  in  process  of 
evolution. 
Eighteyedness  is  also  subject  to  more  excep- 


*  In  the  Art  of  Horsemanship  Xenoplioa  gives  the  most 
detailed  instruction  as  to  the  method  of  mounting  the  horse, 
after  which  he  says,  "  I  think  it  good  that  the  horseman 
should  practice  springing  up  from  the  off-side  as  well,  on 
the  chance  that  he  may  happen  to  be  leading  his  horse  with 
his  left  hand,  and  holding  his  spear  in  his  right,"  etc. 

35 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

tions  than  righthandedness  because  of  the  pe- 
culiar liability  of  the  right  eye  to  be  thrown 
out  of  its  function  as  the  ''dominant"  one,  or 
leader,  by  many  ocular  diseases,  by  injuries 
from  blows,  and  especially  by  a  more  disabling 
optical  defect  (astigmatism,  hyperopia,  etc.)- 
The  struggle  of  nature  to  preserve  the  dominant 
function  of  the  right  eye  is  patent  in  the  case 
of  nearly  every  patient  that  comes  into  the 
oculist's  office.  *  The  right  will  preserve  its 
acuteness  even  under  a  greater  optical  defect 
than  that  of  its  fellow ;  the  left  is  the  one  more 
frequently  diseased  and  lost,  and  even  with 
lessened  visual  sharpness  the  right  is  often  re- 
tained as  the  dextral  one.  For  there  is  tragedy 
when  from  any  cause  the  righteyed  man  in  adult 
life  is  made  into  a  lefteyed  patient.  Every  act 
and  co-ordination  and  judgment  becomes  slower, 
more  awkward,  more  difficult  and  more  inexact 
in  result,  because  the  visual  factor  in  every  act 
(and  even  every  thought)  is  furnished  by  the 
opposite  far-away  and  more  inexpert  center. 
There  are  few  greater  afflictions  than  one  I  now 
am  witness  of — paralysis  of  the  upper  lid  of  the 
right  eye  in  a  righteyed  person  occurring  in  full 
adult  or  late  life.   *The  most  amazing  conse- 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

quence  of  righteyedness  is  lateral  curvature  of 
the  spine.  Approximately  about  20,000,000  of 
the  people  of  the  United  States  have  lateral 
curvature  of  the  spine,  and  of  these  about  three 
fourths,  or  about  15,000,000,  indirectly  owe 
their  disease  to  righteyedness.  The  deforming 
and  crippling  writing  position  which  causes  the 
deformity  of  the  15,000,000,  is  due  to  the  neces- 
sity of  bending  the  body  and  head  to  the  left  in 
order  that  the  right  eye  may  see  the  pen  point. 
The  right  eye  must  see  the  intellectual  thing 
written  even  though  the  distortion  of  the  back 
and  tragedy  of  a  life  result ! 

When  a  righthanded  person  is  made  into  a 
lefthanded  one  by  a  broken  arm,  or  by  the  equal 
misfortune  of  a  foolish  parent  wiser  than 
nature,  the  results  are  almost  sure  to  be  bane- 
ful. If  undertaken  early  enough  in  youth,  the 
foolishness  of  trying  to  train  the  right  hand  by 
whipping,  tying  up  the  left,  etc.,  may  sometimes 
succeed,  but  at  the  expense  of  a  life  of  trial, 
handicap,  or  even  wretchedness  and  disease. 
Ill  success  in  life  is  often  caused  by  this  foUy. 
It  is  chiefly  the  writing  act  that  arouses  the 
sorry  parent  and  the  ambidexterity-crank  to 
their  impertinent  opposition.  But  it  is  precisely 

37 


? 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


the  writing  act  which  locates  the  speech-center 
in  the  side  of  the  brain  opposite  the  writing 
hand.  Writing,  bound  up  with  speech  and 
memory,  is  the  demonstrated  origin  of  the  local- 
ization of  the  speech-center.  Science,  disease, 
physiology,  tumors  of  the  brain,  etc.,  have 
proved  that  one  may  be  lefthanded  in  every- 
thing except  writing,  and  that  the  speech 
center  is  in  the  left  half-brain.  I  have  a  patient 
who,  as  a  boy,  was  cruelly  compelled  to  stop 
writing  with  his  left  hand,  and  after  years  of 
torment  he  was  made  a  dextral  writer.  And 
for  forty  years  he  has  never  been  able  to  think 
and  write  at  the  same  time.  He  cannot  write 
the  simplest  letter  that  requires  thought,  plan- 
ning, or  judgment.  He  sends  miles  or  waits 
hours  for  a  stenographer,  and  can  dictate  the 
most  technical  engineering  plans  with  clearness 
and  rapidity.  Another  patient  has  been  made 
mentally  morbid,  and  a  life  of  invalidism  has 
resulted  from  the  same  cause.  In  the  United 
y  States  there  are  about  six  million  originally 
or  persisting  lefthanded  persons,  a  portion  of 
whom  are  mental  and  even  physical  cripples 
from  the  injudicious  antipathy  of  parents  or 
teachers  to  the  ''south-pawed."    In  compara- 

38 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

tively  few  cases  is  the  attempted  cliange  en- 
tirely successful.  They  have  a  sufficiently  hard 
time  to  get  lefthanded  work  benches,  tools,  etc., 
and  to  pursue  the  avocations  of  the  right- 
handed,  without  doubling  their  handicap  by 
dividing  the  centers  required  in  a  composite  act 
between  the  two  dissociate  brain-halves.  How 
pitiable  is  the  lot  of  the  lefthanded  soldier! 
I  have  two  thorough-going  lefthanded  patients 
who  by  training  have  learned  to  shoot  a  rifle 
from  the  right  shoulder,  but  they  depress  the 
right  eye  below  the  gunstock  and  awkwardly 
sight  with  the  left  eye !  Wlien  all  his  sinistral 
functions  are  performed  by  the  lefthanded  man 
by  means  of  the  cerebral  centers  located  in  the 
right-brain  hemispheres  he  is  as  efficient,  quick, 
intellectual,  etc.,  as  the  righthanded  person. 
The  Jewish  lefthanded  slingers,  it  is  said,  could 
cut  a  hair  set  up  as  a  target.  Because  there 
are  a  few  persons  with  the  heart  on  the  right 
side  of  the  chest  it  would  seem  to  be  even  more 
the  duty  of  the  ambidexterity  societies  and  of 
officious  parents  to  remove  it  to  the  left  side  by 
surgical  operation !  .  Let  the  lefthanded  child 
alone !  Nature  is  quite  as  wise  as  the  ignorant 
intermeddlers.    For  ages  the  stranger,  the  un- 

39 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

known  and  unusual  person  has  been  looked 
upon  with  dislike,  and  has  even  been  persecuted 
because  he  differed  from  the  one  without  other 
excellencies  than  that  of  being  like  his  neigh- 
bors, or  like  the  majority  of  them.  The  dislike 
of  lefthandedness  is  a  relic  of  the  same  vicious 
egotism.  The  lefthanded  person  is  stupidly 
charged  with  being  "sinister"  and  unlucky, 
and  all  because  ages  ago  to  the  left  or  shield- 
hand  was  given  the  natural  task  of  protecting 
the  heart  and  life  of  its  master! 

And  a  little  quiet  and  unprejudiced  observa- 
tion would  have  shown  that  it  is  rather  a 
division  of  tasks,  a  happy  and  advisable  differ- 
entiation— ^not  subordination — of  function,  that 
is  coming  about  in  the  jobs  which  the  left  hand 
is  commissioned  to  do.  In  the  sterling  old  tasks 
of  shoveling,  pitchforking,  chopping  with  the 
ax,  etc.,  the  left  hand  almost  divides  the  honors 
equally  with  the  right.  In  locomotive-engineer 
driving,  it  is  indeed  the  left  hand  that  is  on  the 
throttle  valve.  Especially  in  the  musician's 
art  both  hands  must  be  equally  expert  and 
active.  The  fingering  of  the  left  hand  of  the 
violinist  is  technically  as  fine  and  dextrous  a 
task  as  the  bowing  of  the  dextral  hand.    It  is  of 

40 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

vast  significance  that  all  tasks  should  be  divided 
up  and  allotted  to  each  hand,  each  eye  and  foot 
(perhaps  to  each  ear!) — all  except  the  one  of 
intellect  bound  up  with  writing,  speech,  and 
memory,  which,  necessarily  single,  must  be 
shocked  into  action  by  a  single  and  not  a  dupli- 
cated set  of  organs,  which  are  placed  only  in 
one  cerebral  hemisphere.  It  is  of  no  advantage 
to  be  able  to  eat  with  the  knife  or  fork  with 
each  hand  alternately  and  equally"  well ;  it  is  a 
positive  disadvantage.  Should  every  musician 
have  two  pianos,  one  as  now  constructed  and 
another  with  the  bass  keys  on  the  right,  and 
should  he  learn  to  play  equally  well  upon  each 
piano?  That  is  what  ambidexterity  means. 
The  poor  lefthanded  person  is  already  almost 
entirely  shut  out  from  any  musical  calling,  ex- 
cept that  of  singing,  and  there  are  many  other 
avocations  in  which  he  is  handicapped  or 
doomed  to  failure.  From  this  point  of  view 
one  may  wonder  if  the  number  of  the  lefthanded 
will  really  decrease  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
in  civilization's  progress  of  the  future.  There 
are  no  statistics  to  help  us  decide  the  question. 
The  exclusion  of  such  unfit  ones  will  at  least  be 
only  hastened  by  any  interference  with  nature's 

41 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

produQtion  of  lefthancledness.  With  a  very 
few  years  in  eliildhood  of  nascent  riglithanded- 
ness  or  lefthandedness  started,  the  habit  be- 
comes so  fixed  that  years  of  punishment,  deri- 
sion, strapping  up  the  left  hand  and  other 
methods  of  torture  are  utterly  x)owerless  to 
alter  the  developing  and  educating  speech  cen- 
ter in  the  right-brain. 

The  bleatings,  mooings,  bellowings,  roarings, 
etc.,  of  vertebrate  animals,  together  with  the 
cries  of  the  infant  during  its  first  months  of 
life,  are  not  language,  or  even  the  beginnings 
of  language.  Whether  they  express  or  are 
understood  to  express  desire,  pain,  anger  or 
passion,  they  are  the  voice,  or  suggestion  of 
the  voice,  of  the  organism  as  a  whole,  undiffer- 
entiate, nonintellectual, — the  cry  of  the  abstract 
physiologic  machine,  wanting  or  pained,  and  as 
a  unit ;  they  are  not  inspired  or  guided  by  vision 
or  by  definite  motived  act.  The  air  issues  from 
the  caverns  of  appetite  and  emotion,  and  in 
passing  through  the  upper  organs  of  respira- 
tion is  slightly  transformed  into  inarticulate 
sound.  The  vegetal  or  automatic  organism  is 
its  origin  and  end.  If  innervated  by  the  corti- 
cal centers  these  cries  probably  spring  from  a 

42 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  RIGHTHANDEDNESS 

bilateral  origin.  Only  when  they  become  pur- 
posive in  the  slightest  degree,  when  the  other 
senses,  and  especially  sight,  are  called  in  to 
furnish  data  and  help  for  the  motived  and 
designed  act,  does  the  innervation  of  phonation 
arise  in  a  single  or  one-sided  center;  the  con- 
tinuous evolution  of  the  speech-center  thus 
becomes  established  and  progressive.  The 
"precise"  but  indefinite  time  at  which  this 
monolaterality  begins  is  the  ^'precise"  but  in- 
definite time  when  inarticulation  becomes 
articulation.  Articulate  phonation  is  the  inter- 
mediate of  specialized  and  designed  acts;  it  is 
the  voice  of  intellect,  choice,  and  purpose.  It  is 
compositely  formed  out  of  the  factors  of  sight, 
feeling,  hearing,  etc.,  furnished  by  individual, 
topographically  placed,  and  neighboring  cere- 
bral centers.  In  a  certain  individual  right- 
eyedness  is  doubtless  the  determining  factor  in 
localizing  the  developing  speech-center  in  the 
left  half -brain.  The  individual  misfortune,  pos- 
sibly tragedy,  comes  from  a  compelled  change 
of  plan  after  the  localization  on  one  side  is 
under  way,  or  established.  A  higher  error  of 
refraction  in  the  right  eye,  or  the  results  of 
disease,  such  as  keratitis,  conjunctivitis,  squint, 

43 


y 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

etc.,  may  bring  about  the  misfortune.  To  pro- 
duce lefteyedness,  when  obviable,  by  reckless 
operations  is,  in  the  surgeon,  a  scientific 
blunder.  To  will  and  compel  righthandedness 
in  the  naturally  lefthanded  is  a  crime. 

Physiologically,  therefore,  the  reason  why  an 
infant  puts  forth  the  right  hand  to  grasp 
objects  is  because  the  right  eye  is  the  one  which 
is  nearest  perfect  visually,  anatomically,  or 
optically.  The  law  derived  from  the  phylum  of 
the  entire  past  is  that  the  right  eye  and  right 
forefoot,  or  right  hand,  must  work  together. 
In  all  animals  the  right  eye  governs  the  placing 
and  action  of  the  right  front  foot,  of  the  right 
side  of  the  body,  the  guarding  against  dangers 
on  the  right  side,  etc.  The  left  eye  has  the  same 
office  for  the  left  side.  Heredity  has  place  in 
the  creation  of  the  more  nearly  perfect  right 
eye.  If  the  left  eye  of  the  infant  is  the  better 
seeing  eye  it  will  gi^asp  at  objects  with  the  left 
hand,  and  become  lefthanded.  >  Handedness,  if 
one  may  devise  the  word,  becomes  either  right- 
handedness  or  lefthandedness,  according  to  the 
dictating  condition  of  the  better  eyedness,  right 
or  left. 


44 


CHAPTER  II. 

WHY    IS    A    PARTICULAR    CHILD    RIGHTHANDED    OR 
LEFTHANDED?  * 

If,  as  I  believe,  the  study  of  civilized  people 
shows  that  the  special  incidence  of  righthanded- 
ness,  and  of  lef  thandednes^,  and  of  mixed  types, 
is  governed  directly  by  ocular  dominance,  and 
only  indirectly  and  partially  by  heredity,  a  thor- 
ough understanding  of  the  subject  will  be 
gained  by  a  preliminary  look  at  the  precedent 
animal  function  and  habit.  And  this  is  epitom- 
ized as  right-eye  dominance  of  general  dextral 
or  right-side  function,  and  left-eye  dominance 
of  general  sinistral  function.  To  begin  with, 
embryology  demonstrates  the  existence  of  vis- 
ion long  before  muscles,  so  that  historically  and 
evolutionally  vision  governs  motility;  the  very 
cleavage  of  the  brain  in  the  two  so  independent 
halves  of  all  types  was  doubtless  due  to  the 
unilateralism  and  independence  of  ocular  func- 
tion. The  more  primitive  the  type  the  more 
on  one  side  of  the  head  was  the  governing  eye. 


Long  Island  Medical  Journal,  November,  1907. 

45 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

and  the  more  independent  it  was  of  its  fellow 
upon  the  other  side.  A  motion  to  strike  one  eye 
from  its  side  does  not  cause  the  other  eye  to 
wink  or  to  protect  itself  or  the  animal  from 
injury.  One  eye  governed  one  side  of  the  body 
(because  vision  must  incite  and  control  all 
action),  especially  the  co-ordinated  front  foot  of 
that  side,  but  also  the  hind  one  of  that  side  to  a 
less  degree  or  less  accurately;  and  the  other 
eye  acted  for  the  other  lateral  organs  in  the 
same  way.  Fewer  and  less  accurately  co-ordi- 
nated commissural  fibers  between  the  two  hemi- 
spheres were  then  necessary  than  when  later 
complication  and  specialization  arose.  It  is 
evident  that  when  one  eye  was  placed  upon  one 
side  of  the  head,  not  looking  forward,  and 
separated  from  the  other  by  a  protruding  mass 
of  organs  and  bony  structures,  it  must  act  inde- 
pendently of  the  other,  to  see  objects  upon  that 
side  of  the  body,  to  protect  it,  and  to  govern 
the  muscles  of  its  side.  So  long  as  the  forefeet 
are  equally  used,  i.e.,  so  long  as  no  differentia- 
tion of  their  function  arises,  there  can  be  no 
question  of  the  existence  of  righthandedness,  or 
rightfootedness.  The  chief,  most  frequent, 
most  necessary  of  all   animalian   four-footed 

46 


A  RIGHTHANDED  OR  LEFTHANDED  CHILD 

function  is  placing  first  one  front  foot,  and  then 
the  other  front  foot,  in  the  safe  and  right  place 
and  position,  especially  in  rapid  motion,  fight- 
ing, defence,  etc.,  etc.  That  placing  of  the  right 
forefoot  must  be  dominated  by  the  right  eye, 
and  of  the  left  forefoot  by  the  left  eye.  There 
is  simply  divided  dominance  of  the  eyes,  each 
supreme  in  the  control  of  its  correlated  lateral 
organs.  The  peculiarities  of  the  avoidance  by 
a  horse  of  a  stone  or  log  in  the  road,  by,  say,  the 
right  hindfoot,  the  stone  at  the  instant  out  of 
sight,  and  the  right  eye  perhaps  governing  the 
avoidance  of  a  similar  impediment  in  front  by 
the  right  forefoot,  is  a  most  instructive  thing. 
The  co-ordination  of  eye  and  front  foot  is  more 
exact,  and  the  very  awkwardness  of  the  hind- 
foot  is  significant. 

The  approach  toward  binocular  fusion,  the 
advance  of  the  eyes  toward  the  front  of  the 
skull,  the  degree  of  forward-lookingness,  if  one 
may  so  speak,  is  measured  and  indicated  by  the 
progress  toward  parallelism  of  the  ocular  axes. 
Recapitulated,  this  progress  towards  parallel- 
ism is  steady  from  lower  to  higher  types,  reach- 
ing complete  parallelism  only  in  man. 
.    In  the  most  civilized  of  humans,  the  literary 

47 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

and  handicraft  workers,  the  progress  does  not 
end  with  parallelism,  but  the  ocular  axes  must 
be  sharply  converged  upon  a  point  12  or  15 
inches  from  the  ejes  for  ten  or  more  hours  a 
day.*  And  with  every  step  of  this  progress  in 
human  beings  there  must  be  a  like  increase  of 
complexity  in  the  interrelations  between  the 
ocular  government  of  common  or  bilateral 
movements  and  functions.  The  number  of 
things  to  be  seen  by  both  eyes,  and  to  be  done 
by  both  hands,  etc.,  is  constantly  increasing. 
But,  pari  passu,  there  is  an  equal  differentiation 
and  specialization  of  functions  of  the  two  hands. 
With  every  expertness  gained,  one  hand  is  told 
off  to  that  extremely  specialized  task,  and  the 
other  perhaps  to  another,  but  at  least  never  to 
the  same.  And  still  the  old  great  rule,  gen- 
erally speaking,  not  only  remains  in  force,  but 
is  increasingly  observed :  In  the  righthanded 
the  dextral  hand  is  chosen  more  and  more  for 
the  heavier,  the  higher,  more  intellectual,  more 
skilled,  more  difficult,  more  minute,  more  de- 
tailed task,  and  the  left  is  still  the  holding. 


*  Lack   of    converging   power   to   carry   this   out  gives   the 
practical    oculist   his   pathologic   problems   of   exophoria   and 


divergent  strabismus. 


48 


A  RIGHTHANDED  OR  LEFTHANDED  CHILD 

assisting,  and  complementary  helper.  In  the 
lefthanded  the  rule  is  reversed,  but  there  is  no 
inferiority  in  the  expertness,  etc.,  of  the  left 
hand  in  these  cases,  although  a  high  percent  of 
their  ancestors  were  righthanded. 

The  rightsided  cerebral  convolutions  retain 
all  the  aptitude  for  governing  skilled  functions 
which  the  left  half-brain  possesses  in  the  ma- 
jority. The  explanation  of  this  seeming  con- 
tradiction of  evolutional  law  is  seen  in  the 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  ''the  ontogeny 
repeats  the  phylogeny"^ — for  righthandedness 
and  lefthandedness  is  not  prenatal  in  origin.  It 
begins  with  the  infant's  coincident  function  of 
eye  and  hand,  and  begins  at  the  period  of  onto- 
genetic developraent  corresponding  to  that  of 
the  phylum  when  forefeet  began  to  be  used  as 
hands,  and  when  one  hand  began  to  be  preferen- 
tially or  necessarily  used  for  a  special  task.  In 
human  historic  development  it  emerges  into 
clear  view  with  the  specialization  of  the  left  as 
the  shield-hand  and  holding-hand,  and  of  the 
right  as  the  spear-hand,  the  counting-hand,  etc., 
and  finally  as  the  writing-hand.  It  is  thus  a 
late  acquirement  of  the  phylum.  Thus  the  in- 
dividual born   now  begins   fo   acquire  it,   for 

4  49 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

either  half-brain,  at  about  six  months  of  age, 
and  the  lefthanded  is  as  quick  to  learn  it  and 
is  just  as  expert  with  his  left  hand  as  his  right- 
handed  brother  with  his  right  hand. 

Two  things  need  to  be  recognized,  empha- 
sized, and  always  borne  in  mind:  First,  there 
is  no  inheritance  of  completed  mechanism,  or 
even  of  predisposition  towards  it.  Either  cere- 
bral hemisphere  may  be  the  seat  of  the  speech- 
center,  and  it  may  innervate  the  more  expert 
hand,  with  absolutely  no  inferiority  of  expert- 
ness  in  the  less  commonly  chosen  right  half- 
brain.*  Thus  heredity  has,  directly,  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  existence  of  the  94 
percent  of  righthanded,  and  6  percent  of 
lefthanded.  If  those  who  are  Mendel-crazed, 
or  who  see  'Hhe  iron  and  adamantine  law  of 
inheritance"  in  everything,  ever  tried  to  trace 
such  supposed  laws  in  the  incidence  of  right- 
handedness,  they  quickly  abandoned  the  hunt. 
Because  they  found  that  here  no  such  ''iron 


*  The  fact  is  a  striking  example  of  how  little  pathology 
of  the  laboratory  kind  has  to  do  with  life,  function,  or  the 
origins  of  diseases.  It  is  a  matter  of  vast  significance  to  a 
man  whether  he  is  righthanded  or  lefthanded,  or  of  mixed 
type.  But  millions  of  slides  by  all  pathologists  could  not 
tell  to  which  class  the  dead  man  belonged. 

50 


A  HIGHTHANDED  OR  LEFTHANDED  CHILD 

law"  exists  (it  exists  nowhere,  forsootli!),  and 
that  some  other  mysterious  agency  is  at  work, 
of  which  they  could  have  no  knowledge.  ' '  The 
wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth,"  and  the  least 
or  the  most  investigation  of  actual  cases  shows 
that  lefthandedness  or  righthandedness  arises 
most  incongruously  for  the  iron-law-of-heredity 
criers,  has  even  nothing  to  do  with  heredity 
directly.  For  several  generations,  e.g.,  neither 
paternal  nor  maternal  ancestors  of  two  children 
were  lefthanded,  and  suddenly  those  two  chil- 
dren are  found  to  be  lefthanded ! 

Secondly,  just  as  there  is  no  endowment  of 
righthandedness  or  lefthandedness,  as  a  com- 
pleted mechanism,  nor  even  of  any  sign  of  an 
inherited  exceptional  aptitude,  so  there  is  no 
completedness  of  the  acquirement.  Every  baby 
of  a  year  of  age  shows  some  beginnings  of  the 
peculiar  expertness,  but  the  progress  in  special- 
ization and  in  the  acquirement  of  kinds  and 
degrees  of  expertness  never  ceases  while  life 
lasts.  And  there  are  as  many  mixes  of  pe- 
culiarities as  there  are  individuals;  there  are 
almost  as  many  anomalous  as  there  are  typical 
cases.  As  a  rule,  of  course,  the  hand  chosen 
for  the  most  expert  tasks  is  increasingly  chosen, 

51 


\ 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

and  people  tend  to  fall  into  two  great  classes, 
the  righthanded  and  the  lefthanded.  All  left- 
handed  mechanics  (and  now  everybody  uses 
machines!)  are  handicapped  and  bothered  by 
the  fact  that  all  machines,  even  to  screws,  are 
made  for  the  righthanded.  Not  to  be  forgotten 
also  is  the  nmnber,  large  in  the  aggregate,  of 
the  righthanded  who,  by  accident,  injury,  etc., 
lose  the  superior  expertness  of  the  right  eye, 
right  hand,  right  leg  or  right  foot;  and,  con- 
versely, the  number  of  the  lefthanded  who 
suffer  similarly  as  regards  their  sinistral  ex- 
pertness. In  such  cases  there  is  a  transfer  of 
task  to  the  opposite  organs,  and  a  slow,  difficult, 
and  always  imperfect  expertness  is  acquired. 
But  in  every  case  there  is  a  crippling,  and  a 
lessening  of  productive  capacity,  a  disadvantag- 
ing in  the  struggle.  And  more  surely  is  there  a 
mixing  from  the  ground  up,  or  rather  from  the 
top  of  the  head  down,  of  hitherto  co-ordinated 
and  related  functions.  The  center  for  the  in- 
termediation of  an  absolutely  necessary  psychic 
and  neurologic  datmn  of  the  engineered  com- 
posite act  has  to  be  transferred  to  the  opposite 
side  of  the  brain.  There  is,  of  course,  halting, 
indecision,  slowness,  or  genuine  inhibition  of 

52 


A  RIGHTHANDED  OR  LEFTHANDED  CHILD 

function  because  of  the  difficulty  of  correlating 
the  data  from  the  two  sides  of  the  brain.  Many 
a  case  of  stuttering,  probably  most,  slowness 
and  morbidities  of  speech,  etc.,  are  due  to  this 
division  or  misplacement  of  the  innervating 
centers  in  opposed  cerebral  hemispheres — all 
bound  with  righteyedness,  righthandedness,  or 
the  opposites,  etc. 

Think  also  of  the  appalling  amount  of  misery, 
mental  and  physical,  the  disease,  the  shame, 
that  for  untold  ages  has  been  thrust  upon  the 
lefthanded  by  parents,  social  custom,  etc. 
There  is  even  now  scarcely  a  poor  lefthanded 
child  who  is  not  cursed  by  the  attempt  to  make 
him  righthanded.  There  are  about  six  million 
naturally  lefthanded  in  the  United  States! 
Every  one  of  them,  if  not  absolutely  diseased, 
is  made  morbid,  less  happy,  handicapped,  by 
the  peculiarity  a  little,  by  the  cruelty  of  chang- 
ing it  a  vast  deal.  Add  the  millions  of  millions 
that  must  have  lived  since  the  first  finger  of 
the  dextral  hand  was  held  up  in  counting!  In 
savage  times  the  savage  mother  and  father,  and 
tribe,  must  have  horribly  maltreated  the  poor 
unfortunates.  There  is  only  a  little  proof  of 
this  in  the  Keep  to  the  Right  of  our  common 

53 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


law,  in  the  wrong  and  ignominy  associated  with 
the  words  sinister,  gauche,  etc.,  and  the  honor 
born  of  mere  contrast,  of  course,  in  right,  dex- 
ytroiis,  dexterity,  etc. 

'  Focus  the  converging  lines  of  the  argamient ! 
The  94  percent  by  all  laws  of  inheritance  and 
of  mechanics  should  long  ago  have  extinguished 
the  relatively  few  lefthanded  anomalies.  They 
persist,  and  perhaps  increasingly.  The  mixed 
types  are  certainly  increasing.  The  vindictive 
effect  of  persecution,  shame,  and  cruelty,  united 
to  the  number  of  the  mutilated,  would  add 
powerfully  to  exclude  them  in  the  long  history 
of  human  evolution.  They  reappear  as  numer- 
ously, as  mysteriously,  apparently  as  i] logi- 
cally as  ever,  and  certainly  in  mockery  of  any 
known  law  of  heredity.    AVhy? 

To  understand  the  answer  it  should  be  re- 
membered that  forward  movement  of  a  four- 
footed  animal,  composed  of  two  poorly  united 
or  co-ordinated  longitudinal  halves,  must  be  by 
means  of  the  governors  of  all  movement — 
vision.  One  organ  of  this  vision  was  for  the 
one  badly  co-ordinated  half-body,  the  other  for 
the  opposite  half.  The  brain  was  halved,  also, 
but  a  slow  and  poor  correlating  mechanism  was 

.'34 


A  RIGHTHANDED  OR  LEFTHANDED  CHILD 

begun  and  is  being  improved,  at  present  much 
improved.  Even  now  the  right  eye  is  united  in 
function  with  the  right  hand,  the  right  foot, 
etc.,  and  especially  with  language,  the  crowning 
achievement  of  humanization.  The  centers  of 
righteyedness,  righthandedness,  rightfooted- 
ness,  speech,  and  writing  (with  memory  and 
intellect)  must  be  topographically  in  the  left 
cerebral  hemisphere  to  insure  speed,  accuracy, 
and  co-ordination  of  united  sensation,  thought, 
will,  and  action.  In  the  lefthanded,  of  course, 
the  same  law  holds  of  the  right  side  of  the 
brain.  In  one  or  in  the  other,  therefore,  a  little 
by  inheritance,  and  more  by  necessity — but  not 
divided  or  mixed!  That  is  disease — and  the 
god  of  evolution  is  a  physiologist,  not  a  pathol- 
ogist! (He  seems  to  have  made  some  pathol- 
ogists, but  not  intentionally;  and  they  are 
pathological!) 

The  right  cerebral  mechanism,  although  dis- 
used for  speech-function  ^d  righthand  func- 
tion for  94  percent  of  all  ancestors,  and  for  a 
special  family  group,  for  untold  generations, 
still  retains  an  equal  aptitude  and  mechanism 
for  function  with  th^  left.  Th5  peripheral 
mechanism  of  left  hand,  left   foot,   etc.,   also 

55 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

retain  their  coequal  educability  and  proficiency. 
What  varies,  and  what  is  the  special  variant 
cause  beyond  the  complete  control  of  the 
biologic  mechanic,  which  induces  the  individual 
incidence  of  righthandedness  and  of  lefthanded- 
ness? 

It  is  the  eyeball.  I  have  measured  20,000  or 
30,000,  and  no  one  was  perfect  in  shape.  It  is  a 
poor  and  makeshift  mechanism  even  apart  from 
its  morphology;  but,  so  difficult,  so  impossible, 
is  the  task  of  making  it  mathematically  perfect 
in  shape,  i.e.,  to  one-three-hundredth  of  an  inch 
of  ametropia  (and  that  may  be  pathologic  in 
resultant  function)  that  such  perfection  of  di- 
mensions has  been  impossible.  An  approach  to 
that  perfection  has  been  attained  in  the  ages, 
and  by  means  of  that  most  powerful  of  all  the 
agents,  the  exclusion  of  the  unfit,  the  exclusion 
of  the  ocularly  unfit. 

When  the  child  begins  to  reach  out  for  and 
to  seize  upon  objects  with  its  hands,  the  ques- 
tion arises  at  once — with  which  hand?  One 
is  usually  all  that  is  necessary,  and  one  must  be 
selected.  Then  begins  either  the  life-long  and 
increasing  ^'eference,  selection,  and  selectabil- 
ity  of  the  right,  or  of  the  left — or  the  history 

5G 


A    RIGHTHANDED    OR    LEFTHANDED     CHILD 

and  perfecting  of  rigiitliandedness,  or  of  left- 
handedness.  The  significant  thing  is  tlie  order 
in  which  the  peripheral  functions  appear  and 
develop  in  the  child.  First  of  all,  long  preced- 
ing, causing,  and  governing  all  others,  espe- 
cially of  motion,  is  Vision.  The  lesson  of 
embryology  is  illustrated  in  the  baby's  life. 
When  the  muscles  of  the  arm  and  hand  are 
ready  for  any  movement,  vision  has  been  long 
ready  to  direct  it  and  make  it  purposive.  Then 
the  correlated  center  for  speech-phonation  is 
located  in  the  brain-half  opposite  that  of  the 
dextral  eye  in  the  righteyed,  and  vice  versa  in 
the  lefteyed.  The  foot-and-leg  correlation  is 
latest  and  always  more  imperfect  and  variant. 
Many  tests  may  be  made  of  the  now  well- 
known  fact  I  have  so  long  urged  of  the  domi- 
nance of  one  eye  in  vision;  of  the  existence, 
under  certain  circumstances,  of  two  images  of 
one  object  (not  strabismic,  but  normal  and 
necessary) ;  and  of  the  psychic  ignoring  of  the 
image  of  the  nondominant  eye.  A  sheet  of 
paper  vertically  held  before  the  eye,  with  the 
edge  against  the  nose,  followed  by  alternate 
closure  and  opening  of  each  eye,  illustrates; 
or  the  pencil  or  finger  may  be  held  in  almost 

57 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

any  position  and  tlie  gaze  fixed  beyond  it.  Other 
devices  prove  that  certainty  of  manual  seizure, 
accuracy  of  mental  representations  of  spacial, 
topographic,  and  stereoscopic  relations  (with 
precision,  safety,  etc.,  of  co-ordinated  actions) 
depend  upon  the  frequent  preference  of  the 
image  of  one  eye,  and  the  ignoring  of  that  of 
the  other.  The  right  eye  and  right  hand  must 
work  together,  the  right  eye  usually  governing 
the  actions  of  the  right  hand;  and  the  same  of 
the  sinistral  organs. 

If  now  the  right  eye  is  more  defective,  more 
ametropic,  if  its  vision  is  poorer,  more  difficult, 
or  more  painful  than  that  of  the  left,  the  left 
eye  must  be  chosen  to  govern  hand-action,  and 
so,  of  course,  the  left  hand  will  become  habit- 
ually the  more  chosen,  the  more  expert,  and  the 
more  educated,  for  the  special  task,  and  soon 
the  child  is  seen  to  be  lef thanded !  Fight  it  all, 
tie  the  left  hand  behind  the  back,  beat  it,  shame 
the  child?  Not  so;  the  cause,  the  faulty  right 
eye,  will  remain  uncorrected  and  unthought  of 
by  all  such  absurdities  and  cruelties. 

In  the  94  percent  and  at  the  beginning  of  the 
function  of  handedness,  the  right  eye  is  the 
better  eye.     Even  in  adults  oculists  have  found 

58 


A  RIGHTHANDED  OR  LEFTHANDED  CHILD 


out  that,  as  a  large  rule,  the  right  eye  is  more 
nearly  perfect  than  the  left,  is  less  subject  to 
disease,  accident,  etc.,  and  that  the  ''un- 
conscious ' '  wisdom  of  the  organism  will  protect 
and  cure  it  more  certainly  than  the  left  (except, 
of  course,  in  the  case  of  the  lefteyed).  And 
when  righteyedness  is  once  established,  Nature 
will  preserve  it  in  despite  of  later  oncoming 
amblyopia,  ametropia,  or  disease,  which  then 
handicap  it  much  more  than  the  left.  The  role 
of  heredity  is  that  of  passing  down  the  more 
nearly  perfectly  formed  eyes  and  the  more 
nearly  perfect  right  eyeball.  The  directly  act- 
ing exceptional  cause  is  the  more  imperfectly 
functioning  right  one  at  the  time  handedness 
is  to  become  either  the  right  or  the  left  variety. 
I  could  adduce  a  hundred  clinical  proofs  of  this. 
And  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that  the  babe's 
eyeballs  are  smaller,  and  hence  more  ametropic 
than  larger  eyeballs,  surely  more  hyperopic 
morphologically — a  fact  of  most  suggestive 
importance. 

A  hundred  questions  and  considerations 
arise:  Handicap  the  infant's  left  eye  in  begin- 
ning lefthandedness?  The  problems  of  equi- 
dominance,  and  of  divided  dominance?    The 

59 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

ophthalmic  surgeon's  duty  in  disease  and 
operations'?  The  blunder  often  committed  by 
opticians  and  oculists  of  bad  glasses  which 
cripple  the  dominant,  and  stimulate  the  non- 
dominant  eye?  The  treatment  of  the  maimed, 
the  one-eyed,  the  paralytics,  etc.?  The  treat- 
ment of  those  so  pathetically  and  badly  wronged 
by  the  ' '  ambidexterity ' '  foolish  ones  I  The  pre- 
vention of  the  cases  of  27  percent  of  all  the 
population  who  have  lateral  curvature  of  the 
spine,  caused  by  ocular  function  and  ocular 
malfunction  ?  The  stopping  of  the  horrid  writ- 
ing posture  of  everybody?  The  arousing  of 
the  medical  world  to  the  awful  importance  of 
the  eyes  as  causes  of  a  hundred  diseases  ?  The 
arousing  of  the  Darwinians  to  the  role  of  bad 
eyes  as  the  great  cause  of  the  exclusion  of  the 
unfit?  These  and  many  such  questions  are, 
indeed,  most  living,  most  imperative,  but  not  to 
be  entered  upon  here. 


60 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    RULE    OF    THE    ROAD.* 

The  localization  through  war  and  barter  of 
the  cerebral  centers  of  speech  and  writing  (and 
hence  of  intellect)  of  94  percent  of  the  popula- 
tion in  the  left  half -brain  is  the  cause  of  right- 
handedness. f  The  increase  of  the  necessary 
differentiation  of  bodily  and  mental  function 
by  the  co-ordination  of  associated  cerebral  cen- 
ters has  resulted  in  a  general  righthandedness, 
righteyedness,  etc.,  the  data  by  vision,  audition, 
and  for  action  of  the  right  leg  and  foot  for 
associated  function,  compelling  a  location  of 
all  these  centers  in  the  same  left-brain  and 
closely  linked  with  the  determining  faculty  of 
speech  and  writing.  With  the  six  percent  of 
lefthanded,  the  reverse  of  all  this  takes  place. 
The  mystery  of  the  origin  of  righthandedness 
is  thus  cleared  up.  With  this  explanation 
manifest  the  other  concum^ent  mystery  of  the 
rule  of  the  road  is  of  easy  solution.  Right- 
handedness,  plus  the  variant  circumstances  o*f 


*  Popular  Science  Monthly,  December,  1907. 
t  See  Popular  Science  Monthly,  August,   1904. 

61 


/;f^BRA^ 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

civilization,  the  reaction  of  the  righthanded 
organism  to  the  environment  (in  the  language 
of  evolution),  explains  all  the  puzzles  of  the 
rule  of  the  road. 

Primitive  war,  as  Homer,  chivalry,  and  pres- 
ent-day savage  customs  demonstrate,  regard- 
less of  the  number  of  combatants,  was  a  matter 
of  individual  encounter,  of  hand-to-hand  con- 
flict. Even  when  archery,  and  throwing  of 
spears,  javelins,  etc.,  came  into  use  the  essential 
individualism  was  not  changed,  and  the  shield- 
ing of  the  left  side,  and  aggressive  use  of  the 
right  hand  continued.  All  military  tactics  and 
drill  of  numbers  was  then  established  as  right- 
handed,  down  to  the  most  minute  particular — 
and  so  continues,  indeed,  although  the  flung 
weapon  weighs  a  thousand  pounds  instead  of 
one  or  two  pounds,  and  is  thrown  five  miles  in- 
stead of  twenty  or  fifty  feet.  After  the  Trojan 
war,  chariots  fell  more  and  more  into  disuse, 
and  cavalry  began  to  take  their  place,  but  this 
in  no  way  changed  the  evolution  of  righthanded 
tactics.  In  Alexander's  time  the  right  flank  of 
the  phalanx  was  the  post  of  honor,  called  the 
head,  the  left  the  tail,  and  marches  and  move- 
ments were  made  by  the  right.    The  commander 

62 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


had  his  station  on  the  right.  So  strongly  estab- 
lished was  righthandedness  as  early  as  the  half- 
legendary  amazonian  times,  that  the  Amazon 
had  her  right  breast  excised  in  order  that  she 
might  hurl  the  javelin  and  shoot  the  arrow  with 
greater  freedom  and  accuracy. 

Thus  not  only  righthandedness  in  the  vast 
majority  of  people,  but  with  it  righteyedness, 
etc.,  firmly  fixed  and  differentiated,  comes  down 
to  the  beginnings  of  civilization.  But  this  is  far 
from  implying  that  in  meeting,  either  two  or 
thousands  of  people  invariably  passed  each 
other  to  the  right.  This  is  proved  by  the 
classical  instance  given  by  Dante  in  the  eigh- 
teenth Canto  of  the  Inferno  in  these  words — 
translation  of  Longfellow: 

Even  as  the  Romans,  for  the  mighty  host, 
The  year  of  Jubilee,  upon  the  bridge. 
Have  chosen  a  mode  to  pass  the  people  over ; 

For  all  upon  one  side  upon  the  Castle 

Their  faces  have,  and  go  unto  St.  Peter's; 
On  the  other  side  they  go  unto  the  mountain. 

Not  only  was  the  Papal  order  necessary  to 
make  the  crowd  keep  to  the  right  in  coming  and 
going,   but   a   barriet  was   erected   along   the 

63 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

middle  of  the  bridge  so  that  the  crowd  could 
not  interfere  with  each  other.  Further  par- 
ticulars are  given  in  Longfellow's  note  to  the 
passage,  and  by  other  commentators  of  Dante. 
In  our  own  times  the  custom  of  foot-passengers 
is  more  firmly  established,  ''as  was  well  illus- 
trated recently  in  the  Paris  Exhibition  in  the 
case  of  the  two  large  wooden  bridges  erected 
opposite  the  Trocadero  to  convey  foot-passen- 
gers over  the  roadway.  Here,  although  for 
what  reason  was  not  apparent,  the  authorities 
commanded  the  people  to  pass  over  the  bridges 
to  the  left,  instead,  as  in  the  case  of  other 
bridges  in  the  same  exhibition  to  the  right. 
After  crossing  the  bridges  the  majority  of  the 
crowd  would  be  seen  bearing  to  the  right,  caus- 
ing endless  pushing  in  crowded  days."  But 
that  many,  especially  women  and  children,  are 
to-day  reckless  of  the  rule,  is  illustrated  in  the 
crowded  side- walks  of  American  cities. 

Whenever,  and  that  was  generally,  the  cus- 
tom and  rule  of  orderly  government  was  estab- 
lished by  military  usage,  the  ancient  and  per^^ 
sistent  habit  of  passing  to  the  right  arose  natu- 
rally from  the  necessity  of  keeping  the  enemyj 
on  the  left  side.     This  t*is  the  shielded  side 

64 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


and  gave  combatants  greater  safety,  as  well  as 
insured  greater  freedom  and  efficiency  for  tlie 
aggressive  right  arm  and  hand. 

The  crux  of  the  difficulty  in  explaining  diver- 
gent usage  is  encountered  by  the  strange 
seeming  anomaly  of  English  practice.  Wher- 
ever English  usage  obtains,  the  carriages  and 
horsemen  pass  to  the  left,  although  foot-passen- 
gers pass  to  the  right.  That  the  foot-passengers 
keep  to  the  right  is  natural,  because  it  was 
derived  from  ages  of  military  precedent.  But 
another  and  overlooked  fact  doubtless  con- 
tributed to  prevent  the  English  walkers  from 
adopting  the  wagoner's  rule  of  passing  to  the 
left.  This  was  the  growth  of  town  and  of  city- 
life.  All  urban  life  was  conditioned  by  narrow 
streets,  so  narrow  that  our  modern  city  alleys 
are  in  comparison  wide.*    At  first,  indeed,  there 


*  St.  Evremoncl  makes  his  visitor  say  that  in  the  Paris  of 
his  time  the  streets  were  muddy  whether  it  rained  or  not, 
because  everybody  threw  rubbish  of  all  kinds  into  the  middle 
of  the  streets.  Ladies  had  to  be  carried  across  the  central 
guttei,-  on  the  backs  of  their  servants.  Men  wore  top-boots, 
like  those  of  postilions.  Blocks  of  vehicles  constantly  occurred, 
and  then  there  was  no  respect  of  persons;  ladies  whose  car- 
riages happened  to  be  entangled  in  them  had  to  listen  to  the 
most  frightful  oaths  and  langxiage.  There  were  often  duels 
with   whips.     Victory   did   not  remain  always  with   the  most 

5  65 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


were  no  sidewalks,  and  there  was  room  at  the 
sides,  when  a  cart  or  carriage  occupied  the  cen- 
ter, for  only  one  person  to  walk  between  the 
wagon  and  the  houses.  Hence  plazas,  open 
spaces  and  squares,  were  the  meeting  places  of 
the  citizens.  Quarrels  and  fighting  were  always 
taking  place  in  the  "streets,"  garbage  and 
refuse  {gare  a  I'eau!)  was  thrown  from  the 
windows  into  the  center  of  the  streets — which 
thus  became  open  sewers,  and  the  mud,  etc.,  of 
passing  vehicles  had  to  be  avoided  with  great 
dexterity  by  the  foot-passers.  And  literally 
with  great  ''dexterity."  The  left  or  shielded 
side,  although  shields  might  not  be  used,  would 
naturally  be  that  presented  to  the  center  of  the 
street.  The  right  side  was  thus  chosto  to  keep 
the  right  hand  or  armed  side  of  the  body  free 
for  action,  to  avoid  the  mud,  to  escape  the 
refuse  flung  from  above,  etc.    And  if  one  pro- 


foul -mouthed.  The  most  dilapidated  fiacre  would  have  re- 
mained where  it  was  until  nightfall  sooner  than  have  made 
way  for  a  court-carriage.  Blind  people  and  blind  mendicants, 
criminals  and  pickpockets  thronged  everywhere.  To  the  clash- 
ing of  bells  were  added  the  shouts  and  cries  of  the  perambulat- 
ing dealers  in  vegetables,  milk,  fruit,  rags,  sand,  brooms,  fish, 
and  water.  The  water-carriers  numbered  some  20,000,  each 
of  whom  distributed  from  30  to  40  pails  a  day.  The  tumult 
of  cries  kept  up  night  as  well  as  day. 

6^ 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


tected  a  lady,  she  was  as  to-day,  given  the  side 
next  the  house-walls.  When  wider  streets  and 
sidewalks  came  into  existence  the  right-passing 
custom  was  already  established;  and  the  still- 
remaining  narrow  ones  in  old  cities  insured  its 
maintenance. 

But  why  did  the  English  early  adopt  the 
habit  of  passing  their  vehicles  to  the  left?  The 
contradictory  rules  have  tormented  visitors, 
evolutionists,  the  correspondents  of  Notes  and 
Queries,  and  many  periodicals  of  the  last  one 
hundred  years,  and  have  been  epitomized  in 
many  forms,  the  most  common  being  this : 

The  rule  of  the  road  is  a  paradox  quite 

In  riding  or  driving  along; 
If  you  keep  to  the  left  you  are  sure  to  be  right ; 

If  you  keep  to  the  right  you'll  be  wrong. 
But  in  walking,  a  different  custom  applies, 

And  just  the  reverse  is  the  rule ; 
If  you  keep  to  the  right,  you'll  be  right,  safe  and  wise ; 

If  you  keep  to  the  left,  you're  a  fool. 

The  English  rule  of  the  road  as  to  vehicles 
obtains  on  the  continent  only  in  some  Swiss 
Cantons  next  to  Italy,  and  in  Italy.  Nowhere, 
apparently  do  foot-passengers,  in  meeting,  ever 
pass  to  the  left.    The  method  of  passing  when 

67 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

overtaking  another  wagon  or  carriage  is  also  a 
result  of  that  adopted  in  meeting.  If  wagons 
pass  to  the  right  they  overtake  to  the  left,  and 
vice  versa.  The  rule  of  all  nations  at  sea,  in- 
cluding the  English,  is  uniform — Port  your 
helm! — i.e.,  pass  to  the  right!  This  interna- 
tional rule  was  settled  in  1862,  yet  Harper's 
''Book  of  Facts"  says  that  near  Great  Britain 
alone  there  were  in  the  six  years  ending  1895, 
some  13,000  collisions  at  sea. 

The  English  rule  of  the  road  was  of  course 
socially  recogTiized  long  in  advance  of  any 
formal  laws  or  decisions  on  the  subject.  So  far 
as  I  can  learn,  the  first  Act  of  Parliament  was 
enacted  in  1835,  and  reads  as  follows : 

Any  person  driving  any  carnage  whatsoever,  or  riding 
any  horse  or  other  animal,  who  meeting  any  other  carriage 
or  horse  or  other  animal,  shall  not  keep  his  carnage  or  hoi'se 
or  other  animal  on  the  left  or  near  side  of  the  road  or  street, 
or,  if  passing  any  other  can-iage  or  horse  or  other  animal 
gomg  in  the  same  direction  shall  not  in  all  eases  where  it  is 
practicable  go  and  pass  to  the  right  or  off  side  of  such  other 
carriage  or  horse  or  other  animal,  shall  be  liable  to  a  fine  not 
exceedmg  10  shillings. 

Any  person  ridmg  any  horse,  and  leading  any  other  horse, 
who  shall  not  keep  such  led  horse  on  the  side  farthest  away 
from  any  can*iage  or  person  passing  him  on  any  public  road 
or  in  any  street  of  a  town  shall  be  liable  to  a  fine  not  exceed- 
ing 10  shillings.    (In  14  and  15  Vict.  Cap.  92,  Sec.  XIII.) 

68 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


The  led  horse,  and  especially  if  the  man  is 
himself  mounted,  requires  the  man's  right  hand 
in  leading  on  the  halter  of  the  led  horse.  An- 
other evident  reason  why  the  led  horse  should 
be  at  the  right  edge  of  the  road  is  to  avoid 
dangers,  both  to  the  led  horse  and  to  the  ap- 
proaching person,  if  the  led  horse  were  to  pass 
in  the  center  of  the  road,  and  thus  graze  the 
passing  vehicle,  man,  or  animals. 

The  universal  ancient  custom,  derived  from 
military  drill  and  righthanded  habit,  of  passing 
to  the  right,  was  therefore  unexceptionally 
continued  by  all  nations  except  two — England 
and  Italy — and  in  these  two  it  was  continued 
as  to  sea-going  vessels,  as  to  led  horses,  and 
as  to  foot-passengers.  But  by  these  two  nations 
the  strange  exception  is  found  that  vehicles  pass 
to  the  left.     Why? 

The  suggestion  has  been  made  that  in  Eng- 
land and  Italy  the  diligences,  and  post-coaches, 
had  to  be  protected  from  highwaymen  and 
brigands  and  this  was  done  by  armed  postil- 
ions; these  sat  of  course  on  the  near  or  left- 
hand  horses,  because  they  were  righthanded 
men  (and  thus  mounted  from  the  left  side  of 
the  horse),  and  also  because  in  driving  the  left 

G9 


RIGHTHx\NDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

hand  held  the  rein  while  the  right  hand  was 
kept  free  to  handle  the  firearms.  The  theory 
is  that  they  passed  to  the  left  in  order  the  better 
to  fight  the  highwaymen  who  were  thus  kept  on 
the  right  side.  This  explanation  is  scarcely 
explanatory.  Were  highwaymen  not  as  com- 
mon in  other  countries  as  in  Italy  and  England? 
Could  they  not  and  would  they  not  as  footmen 
attack  from  the  left  side  of  the  road  as  well  as 
from  the  right?  Usage  so  widespread  must 
have  a  far  more  generally-acting  and  ancient 
habit  beliind  it  than  this  of  robbery.  All  such 
habits  as  the  rule  of  the  road  must  have  sprung 
from  many  and  more  primitive  and  humble 
origins,  from  the  necessities  or  customs  of  the 
common  people,  in  fact,  whence  as  here  the  few 
later  diligences  and  post-coaches  derived  their 
habits.  The  conscious  legal  enactment  is 
merely  the  late  acceptance  of  centuries  of 
unconscious  custom.  If  suddenly  springing  into 
existence  a  general  change  must  be  the  response 
to  a  new  circumstance  of  powerful  and  general 
application. 

Contributing  customs  or  necessities  may  have 
co-operated  to  effect  the  change  in  Italy  and 
England  from  the  natural  passage  of  vehicles 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


to  the  right,  making  them  pass  to  the  left,  while 
foot-passengers,  vessels,  etc.,  continued  to  pass 
to  the  right.  But  it  has  been  overlooked  that 
before  vehicles  had  come  into  use  horseback- 
riding  must  have  set  the  fashion  in  passing 
because  the  riding  of  horses,  asses,  mules,  etc., 
must  have  long  preceded  the  existence  of  the 
wheeled  vehicle  of  any  kind.  For  perhaps  a 
thousand  years  (as  now  in  a  large  part  of  the 
earth's  surface)  it  must  have  been  impossible 
for  transportation  of  goods  or  men  to  be 
effected  by  wagons,  and  only  by  horses,  pack- 
mules,  etc.  During  this  time  the  rule  of  the 
road  must  have  been  fixed  pretty  rigidly,  espe- 
cially as  the  narrow  'Hrail"  or  path  would  not 
everywhere  allow  meeting  riders  to  pass,  but 
only  in  certain  wider  or  more  open  spaces.  In 
all  civilized  countries,  except  the  two  men- 
tioned, the  fact  that  subsequent  customs 
demand  the  passage  to  the  right  shows  that  dur- 
ing the  preceding  centuries,  the  ridden  horses 
and  pack-animals  must  have  passed  to  the  right. 
One  can  scarcely  doubt  that  the  ridden  horses 
of  England  and  Italy  did  the  same.  This  seems 
only  to  deepen  the  mystery  of  their  contrary 
practice  to-day. 

71 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

The  mystery  I  suspect  is  resolved  by  the  for- 
gotten fact  of  the  tremendous,  fashion-setting, 
and  centuries-long  influence  of  chivalry  with  its 
tourneys,  joustings,  and  knightly  battles  on 
horseback,  with  ax,  sword,  spear,  tilting  lance, 
or  pole.  Those  who  have  studied  and  realize 
the  vast  domination  of  chivalry  can  easily  com- 
prehend the  role  it  played  as  its  vogue  after 
centuries  melted  into  plebeian  tilling  the  soil, 
commercialism,  and  roads  covered  with  wagons, 
coaches,  etc.  The  horseback  fights  and  mock- 
battles  of  the  troubadours,  minnesingers, 
knights,  and  aristocrats  of  these  centuries  were 
possible  only  by  the  contestants  meeting  and 
passing  to  the  left.  It  is  needless  to  illustrate 
the  fact  from  histories  of  chivalry,  from 
medieval  legends,  tales,  adventures,  etc., 
whether  of  the  Arthurian  cycle,  or  Ariosto,  or 
a  hundred  aftercomers.  The  club,  spear,  sword 
or  pole  must  be  held  in  the  right  hand  and  the 
reins  in  the  left;  the  horses  and  riders  passed 
necessarily  to  the  left.  There  could  have  been 
no  game  or  reality  of  battle  if  the  passing  were 
to  the  right.  The  holding  the  spear,  lance,  ax 
or  pole  was  dictated  by  righthandedness,  and 
to  fight  each  other  they  had  to  pass  to  the  left. 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


Thus  rightliandedness  begot  left-passing,  owing 
to  the  peculiar  conditions  of  the  battling  or 
jousting. 

The  conclusion  draws  itself:  this  must  have 
settled  the  fashion  of  horses  (and  riders)  pass- 
ing to  the  left  wherever  chivalry  was  merged 
into  wagoning  by  an  evolutionary  process.     I 
judge  it  was  thus  transformed  in  Italy  and  Eng- 
land, and  that  on  the  continent  the  wagon  and 
post-chaise  were  not  slowly  derived  from  the 
fashion  of  chivalry.    We  have  a  capital  proof 
of  the  fact,  as  regards  England,  where  anti- 
quarian research  demonstrates  that  the  pos- 
tilion phase  of  development  was  not  long-con- 
tinued or  generally  practised.    For  the  postilion 
period    (dominative    and    even    tyrannical    in 
France,  as  her  literature  shows)  must  evolu- 
tionallv  be  considered  as  the  intermediate  be- 
tween  horseback-riding,  and  driving  from  the 
wagon- seat  or  box.    In  England  the  driver,  as 
it  were,  jumped  directly  upon  the  wagon-seat 
from  the  ground,  or  from  the  back  of  the  horse 
without  a  vehicle,  while  on  the  continent,  for 
hundreds  of  years,  the  horse  of  the  rider  hauled 
a  vehicle  behind  him,  and  the  representative  of 
the  former  knight  and  rider  became  a  postilion. 

73 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

Lack  of  information  compels  me  to  confess  tliat 
the  actual  and  detailed  steps  of  the  evolution 
in  Italy  are  not  clear  to  me.  But  in  England 
the  postilion's  office  was  short  or  non-existent, 
and  in  early  times  the  drivers  of  wagons,  carts, 
etc.,  walked,  of  course,  on  the  left  or  near  side 
of  the  horse  or  team.  Prohably  the  walking 
was  because  a  single  horse,  instead  of  two  or 
four,  was  the  rule,  as  the  costermonger's  cart 
and  the  Irish  car  to-dav  illustrate.  On  the 
continent  the  teams  were  of  two,  or  four,  or 
more  horses,  and  the  postilion  rode  one  of  the 
"near"  horses;  this  may  be  seen  in  pictures  of 
Paul  Lacroix,  The  Eighteenth  Century,  espe- 
cially that  of  the  "Carabas,"  on  page  448.  By 
the  seventeenth  century,  as  is  shown  on  pages 
6,  44,  etc.,  the  driver  had  mounted  on  the  box, 
but  the  postilion  was  continued  on  the  wheel- 
horse  or,  in  case  of  three  or  four  pairs  of  horses, 
on  the  near  leader  of  the  team.  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  those  who  have  explained  the 
rule  of  the  road  for  vehicles,  as  due  to  the 
position  of  the  driver  or  postilion  on  the  box  or 
seat,  took  post  hoc  for  propter  hoc;  the  custom 
had  already  been  long  established  before  either 
variant  arose.    The  extreme  of  the  post  hoc 

74 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


argument  is  seen  in  the  frequently  adduced 
statement  that  to  have  the  whip-hand  free,  the 
driver  sits  on  the  right  side  of  the  seat,  and 
hence  passes  to  the  left  in  order  that  he  may 
better  see  that  the  wheels  of  the  two  vehicles  do 
not  collide.  A  similar  illusory  explanation 
credits  the  English  left-passing  to  the  fact  that 
the  early  drivers  walked  on  the  left  of  the 
horses,  and  consequently  they  passed  to  the  left 
to  avoid  being  ground  between  the  two  sets  of 
wheels.  King  Arthur  and  Tristram  and  their 
fellows  had  settled  that,  one  judges,  a  thousand 
years  previously. 

Why  did  the  American  colonists  from  Eng- 
land reverse  the  rule  of  the  mother  country  as 
to  vehicles  passing  to  the  left?  That  is  the 
remaining  riddle  which  has  perplexed  every 
writer  upon  the  subject.  There  seems  to  be  no 
exception,  the  Virginia  colonists,  who  were  so 
largely  horseback  riders,  developed  the  rule  of 
passing  to  the  right  as  spontaneously  as  the 
New  Englanders.  In  Canada  there  appears  to 
have  been  a  noteworthy  indecision  in  earlier 
days ;  in  some  places,  as  Toronto  and  St.  John, 
New  Brunswick,  the  English  custom  prevailed. 
My  reports  are  that  to-day  the  American  cus- 

75 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

torn,  if  we  may  so  name  it  (passing  to  the  right) 
is  being  increasingly  adopted. 

The  change  of  the  colonists  to  the  American 
practice  has  been  credited  to  the  necessity  of 
keeping  to  the  right  in  snow  drifted  roadways — 
surely  an  invalid  argument  from  evident  rea- 
sons. The  use  of  ox-teams  is  also  said  to  have 
brought  the  change  about.  This  was  perhaps  a 
minor  contributory  cause,  but,  like  the  preced- 
ing, will  not  explain  the  spontaneity  and  uni- 
versality of  the  American  habit.  Another 
explanation  that  has  been  offered  for  our  i^ass- 
ing  to  the  right  is  that  in  early  days  of  narrow 
and  depressed  roads  the  driver  could  the  better 
judge  of  the  danger  from  the  bank  or  *Mift"  of 
the  roadway  on  the  right.  Lastly,  it  has  been 
suggested  that  lurking  savages  in  the  woods  at 
the  sides  (both  sides)  of  the  road  made  the 
change  of  practice.  But  just  how  either  cause 
compelled  the  colonial  wagoners  to  pass  to  the 
right,  or  how  they  bettered  their  condition  by 
doing  so,  one  vainly  tries  to  discover. 

The  real  explanation  of  the  change  comes  to 
light  in  a  more  careful  observation  and  history 
of  the  actual  facts  and  conditions  of  the  colonial 
immigrants.    In  the  first  place,  they  were  not 

76 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


in  the  beginning  even  preponderatingly  Eng- 
lish. We  appear  prone  to  forget  that  the  first 
Puritan  settlers  were  mostly  Dutch,  to  which 
France  quickly  added  her  complement,  both  of 
continental  or  right-passing  people.  Then  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  long  first  period 
of  settlement  was  not  only  wagonless,  but  even 
horseless,  and  even  English  folk  when  afoot 
had  never  ceased  to  be  right-passers.  The  ox- 
team,  the  ridden  horse,  and  the  led  horse,  were 
the  first  means  of  transportation,  and  all  these 
methods  would  insure  the  beginnings  of  the 
customs  of  right-passing  and  soon  establish  it 
as  the  rule.  It  must  have  been  a  long  and 
fashion-fixing  period  before  the  wheeled  vehicle 
could  have  come  into  any  general  use  to  meddle 
with  the  already  established  custom  of  right- 
passing.  Most  powerful  too  must  have  been 
the  dominating  factor  of  the  long  interregnum, 
disuse  of  the  English  custom,  whereby  men's 
minds  were  freed  from  the  influence  of  the 
special  force  which  had  made  the  old  English 
custom  differ  from  that  of  the  continent.  In 
the  old  countries  war  and  jealousy,  quarrels 
and  crime  made  men  watchful  of  each  other, 
kept  old  customs  in  vigor,  etc.,  while  with  our 

77 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

colonists  the  common  enemy  banded  onr  an- 
cestors together  in  friendship  and  mutual  trust. 
The  habits  of  the  continental  immigrant  also 
came  into  action,  so  that  with  the  factors  of  dis- 
use, of  walkers,  of  horseback-riders,  of  ox-teams, 
etc.,  all  uniting,  the  more  natural  and  universal 
law  came  to  be  customary.  Two  other  necessi- 
ties co-operated  to  win  the  easy  establishment  of 
the  change :  When  wagons  came  into  use  they 
were  hauled  by  two,  by  three,  often  by  four  or 
even  by  six  horses  or  mules.  The  driver,  of 
course,  being  a  righthanded  man,  sat  upon  the 
near  wheel-horse,  and  guided  the  leaders  by  the 
"jerk- line,"  held  again  of  course  in  the  left 
hand.  The  "prairie  schooner"  was  an  illustra- 
tion of  this  universal  American  custom,  and  the 
six-mule  team  of  all  our  armies  in  the  war  of 
the  sixties  was  and  remains  a  distinctive  proof 
of  conditions  which  gave  it  birth  during  the 
earlier  history  of  the  country.  When  the 
driver  left  his  near  wheel-horse  and  jerk-line, 
and  mounted  the  seat  in  the  "schooner," 
wagon,  carriage,  etc.,  handling  the  pair  of  reins 
for  each  pair  of  horses,  there  was  the  best 
reason    in   the   world,    wholly    overlooked   by 

writers,  that  he  should  sit  on  the  right  of  the 

78 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


seat  as  did  and  does  the  driver  in  England, 
although  he  did  not,  as  do  they  pass  to  the  left. 
This  reason  is  that  he  might  operate  the  brake 
with  his  right  hand  or  right  foot.  In  a  hilly 
country  and  with  ungraded  roads,  the  braking 
was  fully  as  necessary  as  the  driving.  The 
combined  force  of  all  these  factors  is  fully  suf- 
ficient to  account  for  the  change  in  our  coun- 
try's custom  from  that  of  England. 

But  the  most  interesting  and  by  all  odds  the 
most  financially  important  part  of  the  story  still 
remains, — that  concerning  the  railways.  The 
history  of  double-tracking  in  the  United  States 
is  not  yet  written.  An  illustration  of  what  took 
place  on  one  trunk  line,  the  Union  Pacific,  is 
not  very  different  from  that  on  others.  This 
company  in  constructing  its  line  across  Idaho 
put  in  sidings  one  and  one  half  miles  long,  every 
three  miles,  and  located  these  all  upon  the  same 
side  of  the  track,  the  object  being  to  utilize 
these  as  parts  of  a  second  continuous  track  at 
a  later  day.  The  English  rule  was  of  course  to 
pass  to  the  left,  as  with  carriages  in  the  com- 
mon highways  and  streets,  a  rule  naturally 
adopted  in  Europe,  India,  etc.  In  our  country 
there  was  said  to  have  been  sufficiently  active 

79 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

political  feeling  to  think  that  '^what  was 
English  was  bad,"  and  from  the  first  this  made 
some  of  the  double-track  railways  righthand 
passers.  I  very  much  doubt  this;  the  right- 
passing  of  our  common  wagons  even  in  revolu- 
tionary times  had  become  the  invariable  rule, 
and  so,  despite  the  influence  of  England,  her 
engineers,  etc.,  the  righthand  rule  in  our  own 
railway  orders  was  in  the  last  century  usually 
adopted.  We  still  have  three  double-track  rail- 
ways which,  owing  to  English  habit,  having 
started  as  left-passers,  still  continue  the  prac- 
tise— the  Lake  Shore,  the  Chicago  and  North- 
western, and  the  Great  Northern.  All  others 
have  been  righthand  roads  from  the  beginning 
of  double-tracking.  It  is  most  astonishing  to 
find  that  any  railway  in  double-tracking  should 
have  adopted  left-passing,  because  the  engineer 
sits  (or  stands)  always  on  the  right  side  of  his 
engine  or  cab,  and  uses  his  left  hand  on  the 
throttle,  observing  the  signals  at  his  right.  In 
lefthand  roads  it  is  plain  that  he  is  at  a  dis- 
advantage in  seeing  the  signals  because  of  in- 
tervening trains  or  cars  upon  the  track  at  his 
right.  A  great  element  of  danger  is  thus 
introduced.    This  may  possibly  help  to  account 

80 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


for  the  existence  of  two  exceptions  to  the  rule 
in  England — one  between  Charing  Cross  and 
Cannon  Street  in  London,  and  another,  one  of 
the  first  suburban  lines  run  out  of  London,  that 
formerly  known  as  the  Greenwich  Railway, 
from  London  Bridge  to  Greenwich.  Various 
explanations  have  been  suggested  to  explain 
these  exceptions  to  the  rule. 

The  danger  in  lefthand  roads  of  obscured 
signals  by  intervening  trains  must  at  least  com- 
plicate and  make  more  expensive  the  working, 
and  it  will  never  be  learned  how  many  accidents 
and  wrecks  may  have  been  caused  by  the  un- 
natural method.  Even  on  righthand  roads  the 
signal  systems  alone  are  now  costing  more  than 
the  entire  construction  a  little  while  ago.  Some 
50  miles  of  modern  signal  systems  are  being  put 
in  by  the  New  York  Central  Kailway  at  a  cost 
of  $60,000  a  mile,  or  $3,000,000  in  all.  There 
are  all-controlling  reasons  why,  once  estab- 
lished, a  modern  lefthand  railway  can  not 
change  to  a  righthand  one,  although  the  disad- 
vantages of  lefthand  roads  grow  amazingly 
every  year.  The  switches  into  factories,  mills, 
yards,  etc.,  once  established  must  be  kept  up, 
and  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of 

6  81 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

property  and  vested  rights  are  concerned.  A 
train  should  enter  a  switch  '' head-on/'  and 
established  switches  are  so  designed. 

Incidentally  the  history  of  signals  is  of  in- 
terest. At  first  watchmen  or  policemen  were 
stationed  along  the  line  as  signalmen  using 
white  and  red  flags  in  the  day  time,  and  at  night 
lanterns  of  the  same  colors.  The  signalmen  at 
first  stood  upon  the  track,  then  to  one  side.  The 
mechanical  signals  are  at  present  often  over- 
head. When  the  man  was  displaced  by  a  me- 
chanical device  it  was  at  first  the  figure  of  a 
man,  with  body,  head,  etc.,  and  with  two  arms 
rising  and  falling  as  did  the  living  man's  arms. 
Then,  the  signal  was  vertically  cut  in  two  leav- 
ing the  man's  half-body,  half-head  and  one  arm. 
That  one  arm  is  now  in  lineal  descent  repre- 
sented by  the  dropping  and  rising  arm  of  the 
semaphore  signal.  A  writer  in  Pall  Mall,  1902, 
thus  describes  the  extension  of  the  signal 
system : 

However  as  traffic  increased,  fixed  signals,  first  of  the  disc 
and  then  of  the  now  universal  semaphore  pattern,  were 
introduced,  and  worked  by  hand — that  is,  by  means  of  a 
handle  at  the  foot  of  the  post.  The  idea  of  manipulating 
a  cluster  of  these  signals,  together  with  track  switches,  was 

82 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


suggested  by  the  inventive  genius  of  a  lazy  Irish  porter. 
The  latter  had  two  signals,  some  distance  apart,  to  attend  to ; 
and  in  order  to  save  himself  the  walk,  he  counterweighted 
the  handle  of  one,  and  tied  to  it  a  length  of  clothes-line. 
Thus  while  standing  at  the  one  he  was  able  to  operate  the 
other.  An  inspector  chanced  to  see  the  rude  though  efficient 
mechanical  device,  and  ordered  some  expeiiments  on  the 
same  principle  to  be  carried  out  in  Camden  goods  yard — 
for  the  incident  occurred  on  the  North  Western  Line — with 
the  result  that  the  system  of  actuating  signals  from  cabins 
or  boxes  by  means  of  levers  and  wires  was  introduced.  The 
first  arrangement  of  concentrated  levers  equipped  with  an 
interlocking  apparatus  was  invented  in  1843. 

The  entire  question  of  working  a  double-track 
road  and  its  signals,  and  especially  of  a  left- 
hand  road,  depends  upon  general  righthanded- 
ness,  etc.,  particularly  upon  righteyedness,  and 
more  than  all  else  upon  the  fact  that  the  driver 
or  locomotive-engineer  sits  or  stands  upon  the 
righthand  side  of  his  boiler  or  cab.  The  factor 
that  has  been  utterly  overlooked,  by  writers,  by 
railway  managers,  by  everybody  connected  with 
or  interested  in  the  problem,  is  that  the  engineer 
stands  or  sits  where  he  does  simply  and  solely 
because  he  is  a  >  iyed  man.  It  is  all  as 
easily  demonstrated  as  the  <^sistence  of  right- 
eyedness by  the  ei        ment  m^h  a  pencil :  Hold 

83 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

up  a  card  or  blotting  sheet  so  that  the  left  eye 
is  covered  by  it  and  the  right  views  the  scene 
or  landscape;  then  suddenly  move  the  card  so 
that  the  right  eye  is  covered  by  it  and  the  left 
eye  is  the  used  one.  At  once  the  whole  scene 
"jumps,"  intermediate  objects  are  in  an  en- 
tirely different  relation  to  those  more  distant, 
there  is  doubt  and  uncertainty  of  localization, 
there  is  discomfort,  and  a  clear  desire  and  at- 
tempt to  get  the  right  eye  into  use.  Look  at 
moving  objects  and  the  troubles  are  increased; 
ride  in  the  engineer's  cab  and  they  are  doubled 
again ;  when  sitting  on  the  left  side  and  looking 
out  of  the  left-side  window,  it  is  necessary  to 
put  the  whole  head,  that  is,  the  right  eye,  out,  in 
order  to  be  sure  about  the  approaching  objects, 
signals  and  their  relations.  Sit  on  the  right 
side  and  at  once  it  is  recognized  that  it  is  only 
the  right  eye  that  need  be  put  outside  the 
window  in  order  to  see  correctly  and  to  satisfy 
the  mind.  It  is  most  curious  and  of  absorbing 
interest  to  see  how  this  fact  was  slowly,  un- 
consciously, blindly  recognized,  but  without 
ever  being  uttered  or  brought  to  consciousness 
in  the  history  of  locomotive  engine  building  and 
early   railroading.     If   you   ask   any   railway 

84 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


official  or  chief  engineer  of  a  modern  railway 
why  the  engineer  sits  on  the  righthand  side  of 
his  cab,  disusing  Ms  skilled  and  strong  right 
hand  and  using  the  left  on  the  lever  of  the 
throttle  valve,  that  lever  on  which  all  force  and 
safety  depends,  and  you  will  be  answered  by  a 
blank  stare  of  wonder  at  such  a  question,  or 
there  will  be  something  said  about  the  wagon- 
driver  sitting  on  the  right  of  the  seat,  about  the 
use  of  the  strong  right  hand  ready  for  the  ap- 
plication of  brakes,  for  whistling,  for  the 
reversing  lever,  for  bell-ringing,  etc.  All  of 
which  is  most  wide  of  the  mark. 

In  the  beginning  of  engine  building,  there 
was  no  "cab"  and  even  in  England  to-day  there 
is  none ;  and  also  no  seat  for  the  engineer  to  sit 
upon.  He  simply  looks  out  in  the  face  of  the 
wind  and  storm  along  the  righthand  side  of  his 
boiler,  at  the  track  in  front  of  him.  The  very 
earliest  machines.  The  Newton,  1680,  The  Cug- 
not,  1769,  The  Murdoch,  1784,  The  Symington, 
1786,  were  directed  by  the  engineer  or  driver  in 
front  of  the  boiler,  and  by  both  hands.  But  as 
early  as  1790,  with  The  Read,  the  engineer  had 
learned  that  he  must  stand  behind  his  boiler, 
although  the  older  method  of  operating  from 

85 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

the  front  of  the  boiler  reappeared  as  late  as 
1803,  The  Trevicks,  in  1821,  The  Griffith,  and 
even  in  1824,  The  James,  etc.  In  some  cases,  as 
in  The  Killingivorth,  1825,  the  location  of  the 
engineer  was  doubtful.  It  is  interesting  and 
instructive  to  watch  the  struggle  from  1790 
onward  between  the  conflicting  unconscious  ten- 
dencies and  demands  of  the  righthanded  and 
righteyed  engineers  (an  occasional  lefteyed 
engineer  may  have  obscured  and  lengthened 
the  progress)  and  the  engine-makers  who  were 
still  more  oblivious  of  righteyedness.  In  The 
Read,  of  1790,  both  hands  were  used  on  the 
throttle  and  there  is  no  intimation  as  to  right- 
eyedness or  the  side  of  the  engine  whence  the 
outlook  was  made.  In  1801  in  the  First  Trevicks 
engine,  and  in  1803  the  Second  Trevicks,  the 
throttle  lever  was  held  in  the  right  hand,  and 
the  engineer  looked  along  the  left  side  of  the 
boiler.  In  the  1808  Trevicks  this  was  also  so, 
if,  as  appears  from  the  picture,  the  right  eye 
looking  past  the  right  side  of  the  boiler  was  the 
custom.  The  dominant  influence  of  the  rule. 
In  the  1805  Trevicks  both  hands  seem  to  have 
been  used,  and  the  right  hand  is  steadily  shown 
in  The  Blankincop,  1812,  Stevens' Am  eric  a, 1S29, 

8G 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


Puffing  Billy,  1813,  Blucher,  1814,  Locomotive, 
1825,  Seguin,  1827,  Royal  George,  1827,  Stephen- 
son's Tivin  Sisters,  1827,  Hackworcli's  Globe, 
1830,  Burg,  1830.  In  all  these,  probably  or 
surely,  the  driver  stood  upon  the  left  side  of 
the  boiler  and  watched  the  track  in  front  from 
his  side.  He  naturally  wanted  to  use  the  right 
hand  as  the  throttle-hand,  and  had  not  yet  dis- 
covered the  ocular  problem.  From  1829,  with 
The  Rocket,  The  CosteMo,  1831,  The  Lafayette, 
1837,  The  Hector,  1839,  Hinhley's  Lion,  Gooch's 
Great  Western  and  all  subsequent  machines,  the 
necessity  of  looking  with  the  right  eye  along  the 
righthand  side  of  the  boiler  at  the  track  and 
signals,  became  dominant,  and  dictated  the 
placing  and  direction  of  the  throttle-valve 
handle.  With  the  late  construction  of  the 
^^cab"  of  the  driver,  the  needs  of  the  right  eye 
were  accentuated  because  the  engineer  in  look- 
ing out  of  the  window  at  his  right  hand  is  com- 
pelled to  put  no  more  than  his  right  eye  out  of 
the  cab-window.  If  he  put  the  left  eye  out  of 
the  left-side  window  he  would  have  to  put  the 
entire  head  out  in  order  to  see  with  the  right 
eye.  Thus  righteyedness  has  unconsciously 
compelled  the  driver  to  disuse  the  right  hand 

87 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

for  the  naturally  expert  work  with  the  throttle- 
valve,  in  order  that  the  greater  danger  may  be 
avoided  that  would  follow  both  to  engineer  and 
to  his  train,  from  putting  the  whole  head  out 
of  the  left  window  of  the  cab. 

Among  the  many  ocular  problems  of  railway 
employees  those  relating  to  deficient  color- 
jDerception  are  of  great  importance,  but  equally 
great  are  those  regarding  presbyopia  or  the 
failure  of  visual  acuteness  after  40  or  45  years 
of  age,  and  especially  should  the  diagnosis  of 
righteyedness  or  lefteyedness  be  held  of  prime 
necessity.  The  left  hand  may  be  allowed,  some- 
what against  nature,  to  manage  the  throttle- 
lever,  but  the  right  eye  must  be  the  absolute 
judge  of  signals,  etc.  Undoubtedly  there  are  a 
few  hundred,  at  least,  of  lefteyed  engineers, 
signal  men,  etc.,  on  our  roads,  and  their  dis- 
ability for  their  jDCculiar  calling  is  gi^eatly 
endangering  lives  and  property.  Nor  should  it 
be  forgotten  that  there  are  generally  jDropor- 
tionally  more  lefteyed  than  lefthanded  men.  As 
trolley-car  *'gripmen"  or  engineers,  chauffeurs 
of  automobiles,  etc.,  the  lefteyed  are  at  only  a 
slight  disadvantage  because  nothing  is  in  front 
of  their  eyes  to  impede  the  dominant  function 

88 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


of  the  right  eye.  Despite  this  fact  the  automo- 
bile cliauffeur  sits  on  the  righthand  seat,  not 
only  because  of  inherited  custom,  but  again  that 
his  right  eye  may  have  the  slight  advantage  of 
position  and  that  his  right  hand  may  be  free  to 
use  in  almost  every  instant's  emergency.  In 
our  trolley  cars  and  electric  locomotives  the  all- 
important  brake  is  operated  with  the  right 
hand. 

To  epitomize,  the  resolution  of  the  mysteries 
as  to  the  origin  of  righthandedness  and  the  rule 
of  the  road  may  be  made  only  by  grasping  the 
phenomena  as  a  whole,  i.e.,  by  massing  the  facts 
of  the  entire  history  from  prehistoric  savage 
battle  and  barter  to  the  expert  locomotive- 
engineer  of  to-day  running  a  '' limited"  train  at 
the  rate  of  a  mile  or  more  a  minute  on  a  two- 
track  or  four-track  railway.  Even  the  cave 
men  show  that  righthandedness  was  the  rule  in 
their  time,  and  spear-hand,  shield-hand,  ges- 
ture-language, digital-counting,  and  the  tally- 
stick,  the  world  over,  fixed  the  speech  and 
writing  and  righthand  brain- centers  in  the  left 
half-brain — and,  of  course,  those  of  the  left 
hand  and  fingers  in  the  right  half -brain.  War 
made  up  the  life  and  set  all  the  fashions  of 

89 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

beginning  civilization,  and  war  together  with 
narrow  streets  established  the  custom  of  right- 
hand  passing,  for  walkers,  riders  of  horses, 
asses,  mules,  etc.,  and  for  drivers  of  all  vehicles, 
and  for  vessels.  For  walkers  and  vessels  no 
people  ever  changed  the  custom,  but  especially 
the  English,  while  preserving  righthand  pass- 
ing in  foot-passengers  and  on  the  sea,  anoma- 
lously developed  lefthand  passing  for  vehicles, 
and  the  same,  of  course  for  double-track  rail- 
roads. What  everybody  has  failed  to  see  is 
that  righthandedness  is  necessarily  bound  up 
with  rightfootedness  and  righteyedness,  be- 
cause all  closely  united  functions  of  the  body 
must  be  correlated  and  their  centers  of  motion 
located  in  contiguity  and  upon  one  side  of  the 
brain,  in  order  to  make  effectual  and  rapid  all 
responses  of  the  organism  to  circmnstance  or 
environment.  This  works  toward  a  necessary 
and  desirable  differentiation  of  function  that 
makes  the  aims  of  the  "ambidexterity"  sillies 
more  than  resultless  and  foolish.  Because 
whenever  a  center  or  congress  of  centers  is 
developed  in  one  half -brain,  disuse  and  transfer 
to  the  other  half  is,  according  to  age,  either  im- 
possible,   faulty,    handicapping,     or    disease- 

90 


THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


producing.  Co-ordinated  functions  of  tlie  body 
require  co-ordinated  and  contiguous  nerve-cen- 
ters u]3on  the  same  side  of  the  brain,  at  least  so 
far  as  is  possible.  If  one  or  two  dextral  factors 
are  in  opposite  cerebral  hemispheres,  respon- 
sive and  quickly-acting  co-ordinated  functions 
will  be  slower  and  more  inaccurate  than  if  on  a 
single  side.  The  English  lefthand  passing  of 
vehicles  is  probably  due  to  the  influence  of  the 
single-hand  fights  on  foot,  tourneyings  and 
joustings  of  horseback-riders,  in  which  meeting 
and  passing  to  the  left  was  inevitable.  The 
custom  grew  and  continued  directly  into  that 
of  the  wagon-drivers.  In  the  United  States 
there  was  a  reversion  to  the  righthand  passing 
of  vehicles,  because  of  the  abeyance  of  lefthand 
passing  of  vehicles,  and  of  vehicles  themselves, 
for  so  long,  with  growth  of  the  natural  right- 
hand  passing  by  walkers,  horseback-riders,  ox- 
teams,  and  wagons  with  drivers  on  the  near- 
wheel  horse,  such  as  is  found  in  the  later 
prairie-schooner,  and  six-mule  army-wagon. 
Three  double-track  railways  in  the  United  States 
still  pass  their  trains  to  the  left,  an  absurd  and 
bad  custom,  expensive  and  productive  of 
wrecks.    But  despite  this  the  engineer  sits  upon 

91 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

the  right  of  his  cab,  because  he  can  in  this  place 
better  observe  the  track  and  signals  in  front  and 
to  his  right,  and  with  the  dominant  right  eye 
only  outside  of  the  cab-window,  whereas,  if  sit- 
ting on  the  left,  he  would  be  compelled  to  put 
the  entire  head  out  in  order  to  see  with  the 
right  eye,  and,  even  then,  because  of  the  boiler, 
not  so  well.  Only  righteyedness  will  explain 
the  long,  doubtful,  and  varying  custom  in 
engine-building  as  to  the  position  of  the 
engineer  in  the  beginning  of  history  of  railway 
construction  and  signaling. 


92 


CHAPTEE  IV. 


STUDY  OF  A  CASE  OF  TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS 

WRITING.* 


Supposing  the  tale  to  have  been  true,  Newton, 
I  believe,  would  never  have  discovered  the  law 
of  gravitation  if  the  individual  apple  had  fallen 
on  his  shoulder  instead  of  on  his  nose,  or  if  it 
had  not  been  peculiarly  colored,  if  it  had  not 
been  blown  by  an  odd  gust  of  wind,  or  if  the 
philosopher  had  not  turned  his  ankle  that  morn- 
ing, etc.  Something  individual  is  needed  to 
bring  truth  to  recog-nition,  and  the  greater  the 
number  of  the  idiosyncratic  elements  the  more 
speedily  and  accurately,  probably,  will  the 
abstract  principle  or  general  law  come  to  light. 
Generalizing  over  a  lot  of  malobserved  and 
colorless  facts  gets  us  ^'no  torrarder."  Being 
and  nonbeing  are  indeed  one,  but  what  kind  of  a 
''one,"  and  how  useless  is  such  "being,"  and 
such  ''nonbeing"!  One  swallow  may  make  a 
summer  if  a  good  ornithologist  is  the  observer 
of  the  migrating  bird.    In  medicine  all  wise 


*  The  Medical  Pvecord,  Xovember  2,  1907. 

93 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS  AND  LEFTHANDEDNESS 

physicians  know  there  is  no  "  typical  case, ' '  and 
that  one  instance  of  any  common  disease 
studied  thoroughly  to  the  bottom,  in  all  its  rela- 
tions and  details,  is  worth  more  than  a  hundred 
glanced  at,  worth  more  than  all  the  glittering 
generalities  of  the  text-books,  worth  more  to  the 
doctor  as  well  as  to  the  patient.  The  same 
truth,  is  it  not  applicable  to  physiology,  to 
neurology,  and  even  to  psychology?  For  ex- 
ample: A  patient,  aged  52,  upon  whom  rests 
heavy  responsibilities,  a  highly  trained  civil 
engineer,  cannot  think  and  write  at  the  same 
time.  He  can  dictate  to  a  stenographer 
thoughtful  and  planning  letters,  but  to  write  the 
simplest  business  or  even  social  letter  requiring 
any  intellectual  attention  or  phrasing  is  abso- 
lutely impossible.  He  is  under  the  necessity, 
therefore,  in  travel  and  at  home,  of  having  a 
stenographer  about  in  order  that  he  may  answer 
letters,  describe  and  attend  to  his  work,  etc. 
As  a  child,  he  was  tortured  for  years  to  make 
him  write  with  his  right  hand.  The  natural 
writing-center  in  the  right  cerebral  hemisphere 
was  thus  rendered  atrophic,  crippled,  or  un- 
usable, and  the  artificially  stimulated  mechan- 

94 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

ism  in  the  left  side  of  the  brain  could  never  be 
made  to  work  correctly  or  easily  by  the  other 
intellectual  organs  during  the  instant  in  which 
they  had  their  own  tasks  to  perform. 

Another  patient,  a  beautiful  but  sickly  and 
also  morbid-minded  girl,  never  could  go  into 
society,  to  balls,  dinners,  etc.,  because  she  could 
never  act  naturally,  dance,  use  the  knife  and 
fork  unconsciously,  or  in  any  definite  fashion; 
her  eyes,  brain,  and  body  had  been  confused, 
made  awkward  and  sickly,  and  her  life  had 
become  a  strange  tragedy.  The  "ambidextral" 
tyrants  had  taken  away  from  her,  when  a  child, 
her  natural  lefthandedness ;  they  had  not  made 
her  righthanded;  she  could  never,  expertly  or 
promptly,  do  the  task  or  purpose  desired ;  they 
had  also  given  her  lateral  curvature  of  the  spine 
and  life-long  indescribable  misery. 

In  still  another  patient,  although  the  tragical 
aspect  had  not  been  so  noteworthy,  there  was 
found  abundant  interest  in  details.  She  is  now 
lefthanded  for  all  except  writing.  She  also 
cannot  write  and  think  at  the  same  time ;  indeed, 
she  positively  ''hates  to  write,"  and  must  also 
dictate  to  a  stenographer  a  simple  description 

95 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

of  her  symptoms.  She  is  a  highly  capable  and 
educated  woman,  a  famous  teacher,  and  con- 
stantly addresses  large  audiences  on  pedagogical 
subjects  with  ease — except  in  regard  to  certain 
''slips  of  the  tongue."  She  frequently  trans- 
poses words  and  even  parts  of  words  when 
speaking,  immediately  becoming  conscious  of 
the  error  and  correcting  it  promptly.  These 
transpositions  began  at  the  age  of  13,  after  long 
and  severe  training  (''with  great  agony"),  had 
forced  her  to  disuse  the  left  hand  for  writing; 
she  began  asking  for,  or  speaking  of  "mish  and 
filk,"  for  instance,  instead  of  "milk  and  fish." 
Words  with  an  opposite  meaning  are  still  used, 
as  ivarm  instead  of  cooL  "West  bay"  instead 
of  the  intended  "best  way"  will  be  uttered.  If 
she  has  something  in  each  hand  she  will  lay 
down  the  wrong  one,  or  throw  that  she  wishes 
to  keep  in  the  waste-basket.  The  greater  the 
general  fatigue  the  more  frequent  such  mis- 
takes. Each  eye  is  equally  dominant,  i.e.,  the 
pencil  throws  two  equally-clear  images  on  the 
wall.  At  about  the  age  of  17  she  discovered 
that  she  could  write  with  either  hand,  and  syn- 
chronously with  both,  normal,  or  mirror-style, 
with  one  or  with  the  other,  etc.    I  append  a 

96 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

series   made   recently   to   illustrate    (pp.    128- 
145).* 

In  order  to  get  a  clear  understanding  of  the 
teachings  of  the  case  I  report,  and  of  other 
similar  ones,  one  must  hold  in  mind  several 
facts,  and  the  most  important  is  that  there  is 
no  adequate  knowledge  of  the  significance  of  a 
biologic  structure  except  historically.  Sec- 
ondly there  is  no  history  so  exact  and  so 
illuminating  as  that  given  in  the  most  compre- 
hensive of  all  biologic  laws,  ''the  ontogeny.' 
repeats  the  phylogeny."  That  sentence  is  the 
master-key  of  almost  all  the  mysteries  of  living 
things.  The  statical  or  anatomical  phasing 
gets  its  explanation  only  through  physiology, 
becomes  clear  only  genetically.  All  pathology 
is  in  origin  nothing  more  than  aberrant  and 
morbid  physiology,  and  all  organic  structure  is 
the  product  of  precedent  and  repetitive  func- 
tion. There  is  no  "pod"  without  a  preceding 
pseudopod.     Instead  of  the  common  scientific 


*  In  all  such  bimanual  writing  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the 
pens  were  placed  on  the  lineless  blank  sheets  with  gaze  and 
attention,  although  the  movements  were  subsequently  executed 
without  these  guides.  The  spacial  and  topographic  accuracy 
were  thus  better  than  would  have  been  true  under  other 
conditions. 

7  97 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

nonsense  that  there  is  no  inheritance  of 
acquired  characteristics,  the  truth  is  that  there 
can  be  no  inheritance  of  any  characteristics  ex- 
\\cept  acquired  ones.  To  come  to  details,  the 
eye  as  an  organic  structure  appears  defined 
within  a  month  after  conception;  the  differ- 
entiation of  muscular  tissue  only  at  five  months ; 
righthandedness  (or  lefthandedness),  however, 
commences  to  appear  only  fourteen  months 
after  conception,  i.e.,  about  five  months  after 
birth.  If,  therefore,  the  individual  organism 
epitomizes  and  illustrates  the  history  of  all  the 
ancestry,  there  are  certain  psychological  and 
metaphysical  conclusions  which  no  monistic  or 
other  materialistic  logic  can  escape.  Em- 
bryologically,  the  eye  is  an  extension  of  the 
brain ;  the  brain  comes  out  to  see.  It  is  not  so 
of  any  other  organ  of  the  body.  The  eye  pre- 
cedes the  appearance  of  muscular  tissue  by 
some  four  months ;  the  inference  is  unavoidable 
that  the  perfection  of  visual  function  long  ante- 
dates and  conditions  free  motility,  which  is 
itself  the  condition  of  the  existence  of  all  higher 
organisms.  Uhi  motus,  ihi  visus  est.  That  is 
the  greatest  of  the  Darwinian  factors,  strangely 

ignored  by  all  Darwins,  governing  the  survival 

9$ 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

of  the  fit  and  the  exclusion  of  the  unfit.  A  fore- 
seeing and  purposive  planning  of  the  meeheLn- 
ism  of  vision,  and  of  motility,  is  thus  evident, 
and  there  cannot  be  foresight  and  plan  except 
there  is  a  foreseer  and  a  planner.  Mentality, 
therefore,  preceded  and  created  structure.  The 
mind,  the  life,  the  brain,  the  eye,  made  their 
tools. 

Again,  the  appearance  of  slight  righthanded- 
ness  is  five  months  after  birth,  and  its  per- 
fectibility goes  on  throughout  life.  This  par- 
ticular differentiation  of  function  is  dependent 
upon  attention,  and  is  a  matter  of  education. 
But  there  can  be  no  attention  without  an  at- 
tender.  In  sensation-making,  in  conscious 
willing  to  act,  in  choosing  to  use  one  hand 
rather  than  the  other,  we  reach  beyond  the  limit 
of  automatonism  or  of  mechanism  per  se,  and 
come  to  the  hand  upon  the  lever  of  the  engine, 
i.e.,  upon  the  something  beyond  the  machine — 
in  a  word,  upon  the  metaphysical.  If  there  is  a 
control  of  force,  called  attention,  that  can  be 
transferred  from  one  side  of  the  brain  at  will, 
and  markedly  change  the  functions  of  one  side 
or  the  other,  then  there  is  something  outside  of 
and  above  the  individual  mechanisms  and  cen- 

99 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

ters  which  is  not  a  part  of  them,  and  which 
uses  them  as  tools.  A  player  on  the  piano  is 
something  different  from  the  piano  itself.  The 
player  upon  the  cerebral  piano  transfers  his 
attention  to  one  side  or  other  of  the  keyboard 
of  the  brain.  The  fact  of  attention,  transferred 
at  will  to  one  part  or  another,  and  choosing  at 
pleasure  not  only  the  music  to  play,  but  the 
parts  of  the  keyboard  on  which  to  play,  playing 
better  with  one  hand  or  the  other — all  this 
demonstrates  that  there  is  a  mechanism,  a 
material,  neurological  mechanism,  but  also  that 
the  player  is  something  other  and  different, 
placed  over  it,  a  mental  somewhat  not  bound  up 
with  it,  not  explainable  as  the  action  of  the 
nervous  system  per  se,  but  using  that  mechan- 
ism as  an  instrument.  The  psychology  that  is 
monistic,  that  denies  life,  that  denies  the  funda- 
mental distinction  and  existence  of  a  machine 
and  a  machinist,  is  ah  initio  unscientific. 

Moreover,  cerebral  tumors  and  traumatisms 
and  physiological  experiment  have  absolutely 
proved  that  the  adult,  central,  or  cerebral  mech- 
anisms of  memory,  of  language,  of  writing,  of 
speech,  etc.,  are  located  in  one  side  of  the  brain, 
that  opposite  the  writing  hand.     In  the  right- 

100 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

handed  tlie  left  half-brain  is  therefore  pre- 
eminently the  seat  of  the  mind.  The  mechanisms 
that  give  the  man  external  validity,  that 
intermediate  him  with  useful  objectivity,  are 
one-sided.  But  this  one-sided  differentiation  is 
acquired,  and  is  subject  to  progressive  perfec- 
tion throughout  life.  The  machine  is  becoming 
more  and  more  perfect.  Dividing  the  machine 
in  two  parts  of  the  brain  is  degradation,  is 
against  progress,  and  the  inevitable  differentia- 
tion of  function.  "  Ambidexterity  "-mongering 
is  the  most  absurd  silliness. 

Note  that  there  is  no  discoverable  difference 
of  microscopic  structure  between  the  corre- 
sponding unused  brain-tissue  on  one  side,  and 
that  in  the  cerebral  speech-center  much  used 
on  the  other.  And  note  again  that  the  choice 
is  open  to  the  attention  or  will  to  elect  in  infancy 
either  side  to  work  from,  and  thus  to  make  the 
individual  either  righthanded  or  lefthanded. 
Observe  also  that  as  about  96  percent  of  people 
now  are  righthanded,  the  supposed  "laws  of 
heredity"  are  put  utterly  out  of  court  so  far  as 
pertains  to  the  number  of  the  lefthanded.  Every 
lefthanded  person  must  have  had  millions  of 
righthanded  ancestors  for  every  one  that  was 
lefthanded. 

101 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

•  Not  to  be  omitted,  too,  is  that  with  all  the 
actual  or  possible  education  of  the  left  cerebral 
center  in  the  righthanded  (or  of  the  right  in 
the  lefthanded),  there  is  a  poorly  co-operating 
observing  or  reversing,  or  mirroring  mechan- 
ism of  the  other  side  which  can  be  brought  into 
use  by  the  attention.  The  psyche  is,  therefore, 
again  demonstrated  to  be  something  more  than 
the  mechanism.  It  plays  at  will  upon  the 
mechanism.  It  plays  badly,  if  you  please,  but 
the  mechanism  does  not  play  itself !  Attention 
is  merely  the  name  we  give  the  metaphysical 
player,  the  cerebral  engine  cannot  run  itself,  or 
the  piano  play  itself  any  more  than  could  the 
locomotive  or  the  musical  machine.  In  depriv- 
ing one  hand  or  one  center  of  the  attention,  we 
make  the  other  an  automatic  "trailer"  (as  I 
have  called  it),  working  by  means  of  the  com- 
missural fibers  between  the  two  oppositely- 
placed  centers,  but  working  badly,  largely  with- 
out the  sense  of  direction,  form,  topograph}^, 
etc.  The  attention,  therefore,  adds  all-import- 
ant elements  to  the  mechanism.  Psychology 
can  no  longer  ignore  pathology,  or  aberrant 
phj'siology. 

Now,  what  is  this  "Attention"?    As  before, 

102 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

the  question  can  be  answered  only  genetically. 
The  brain  comes  out  to  see,  but  only  succeeds  in 
really  seeing  with  some  comparative  degree  of 
accuracy  at  about  five  or  six  months  after  birth. 
And  this  is  precisely  the  date  at  which  right- 
handedness,  or  the  reverse^,  appears.  In  about 
96  percent  of  infants  the  right  eye  is  the  better- 
seeing  eye,  and  thus  compels  the  right  hand  to 
work  with  it.  Thus,  vision  is  the  father  of 
action,  of  righthanded  action,  and  righteyedness 
is  bound  up  as  a  precedent,  synchronous,  and 
causal  factor  of  righthandedness.  The  writing 
illustrations  to  be  given  show  that  spacial  rela- 
tions are  created  and  definitized  by  ''ocular 
attention."  Direction,  location,  measurement — 
all  topographical  factors,  are  thus  products  of 
vision.  But  a  secondary  product  has  been 
evolved,  its  working  illustrated  in  the  writing 
illustrations,  which  may  be  called  psychic  or 
mental  attention.  It  is  plainly  a  derivative  or 
product  of  ocular  attention  because  it  can  only 
exist  separately  when  the  visual  attention  is 
not  upon  a  (usually)  moving  object.  With  the 
eye  closed  it  may  be  brought  into  existence, 
but  its  derivative  nature  is  again  evidenced  by 
its  imperfection  of  work,  the  lack  of  direction, 

103 


y 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


of  accuracy  of  topographical  qualities,  etc. 
With  the  active  vision  renounced,  it  may  even 
be  turned  upon  sensations  not  visually  derived, 
such  as  of  sounds,  odors,  tastes,  etc.,  but  all 
sounds  at  least  are  topographical  and  direc- 
tional ;  pain  and  touch  are  of  the  localized  parts 
of  the  body,  or  again  spacial  in  nature,  and  even 
taste  is  located  in  the  mouth.  The  brain  did 
not  make  out  of  its  own  substance  the  periph- 
eral organs  of  hearing,  taste,  touch,  etc.;  the 
eye  alone  is  brain-substance  told  off  to  a  special 
mental  and  cerebral  duty  which  was  prevented 
by  a  nontransparent  skull. 

The  execution  of  a  compositely-formed  re- 
solve requiring  first  of  all  vision,  then  possibly 
other  sensational  stimuli,  but  always  memory, 
i.e.,  the  stored  results  of  all  previous  co-ordi- 
nated activities,  words,  speech,  etc.,  can  issue  in 
swift  and  decisive  act  only  through  the  placing 
of  all  the  most  directly  intermediating  cerebral 
centers  in  the  closest  possible  contigTiity  in  one 
side  of  the  brain.  If  one  is  righthanded  his 
centers  for  writing,  speech,  and  memory  must 
be  on  the  left  side.  Upon  the  same  side,  there- 
fore, must  be  the  visual  and  other  centers  which 
furnish   the  chief  data  for  the  compositely- 

104 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

formed  act.  If  one  or  more  important  data 
must  come  from  centers  in  the  opposite  half- 
brain,  delay  at  least  must  ensue,  and  other 
doubts  and  inaccuracies  also.  Hence  the  all- 
necessary  concentrations  of  the  chief  organs 
and  functions  in  one  side  of  the  brain.  The 
organist  plays  on  several  banks  of  keys,  and 
with  pedals,  uses  scores  of  stops,  reads  five 
staffs  of  music,  etc.,  that  is,  he  really  plays  on 
many  organs  at  once.  But  his  banks  of  keys 
and  stops  must  not  be  located  on  different  sides 
of  the  church,  or  even  beyond  the  reach  of  his 
arms.  The  two  cerebral  cortical  hemispheres 
are  indeed  somewhat  connected  by  commissural 
fibers,  but  poorly  so  at  best,  as  our  trailing 
handwriting  shows.  Biologically,  the  safety 
and  success  of  the  human  organism  has  always 
dei^ended  upon  the  most  intimate,  accurate,  and 
swift  co-ordination  of  many  factors  and  cortical 
centers  in  order  to  issue  in  resolve  and  action. 
Such  co-ordination  could  not  take  place  if  the 
cortical  centers  furnishing  the  necessary  data 
for  action  were  divided  equally  between  the  two 
cerebral  hemispheres. 

The  difficulty  of  understanding  the  nature 
and  origin  of  mirror- writing  has  come  from  the 

105 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

fact  of  looking  at  it  as  tlie  result  first  of  a 
pathological  state  of  mind  or  nerve  action,  and 
secondly  as  the  work  of  a  finished  or  completed 
mechanism.  Pathology  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  matter ;  it  is  physiological  and  natural,  due 
to  the  action  and  degree  of  attention,  and  it  is 
also  a  product  of  education,  habit,  or  develop- 
ment. Soltmann,  Erlenmeyer,  Marinesco,  Sol- 
lier,  and  others  look  upon  it  as  a  pathological, 
and  as  a  finished  and  presented  fact.  Others, 
Buchwald,  Durand,  Vogt,  Nicolle  and  Hali- 
pre,  Meige,  Bernard,  Ballet,  Figuera,  etc., 
hold  it  to  be  normal  of  the  left  hand  in  the 
righthanded,  sometimes  even  in  the  lefthanded. 
In  77  deaf  mutes  Soltmann  found  35  percent 
wrote  mirror-style  with  the  left,  and  he  con- 
cludes that  "the  more  educated  the  person  the 
less  he  will  fall  into  mirror- writing  with  the  left 
hand."  This  is  the  reverse  of  the  truth,  and 
nothing  is  said  as  to  the  fundamental  condition 
— the  fact  of  precedent  lefthandedness,  either 
continued  or  overcome,  and  of  mixed  types. 

A  simple  device  would  have  put  all  such 
errors  to  rout  and  would  have  shown  the  truth. 
The  difficulty  in  writing  in  the  manner  habit- 
ually chosen  is  forgotten;  it  is  an  art,  slowly 

106 


I 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

and  laboriouslj'  acquired,  and  always  poorly 
executed,  tliis  writing  on  a  table  or  a  flat  sur- 
face in  front,  and  with  the  body  craned  to  the 
left  to  see  with  the  right  eye  the  writing  which 
is  being  executed.  (By  the  left  eye  in  the  left- 
handed,  of  course.)  And  also  there  is  a  univer- 
sal neglect  of  the  direction  in  which  the  hand  is 
commanded  to  write.  If  one  writes  mirror-style 
he  must  write  towards  the  body  with  the  right 
hand,  and  away  from  it  with  the  left.  This  is 
demonstrated  by  the  plan  here  proposed :  Place 
the  surface  upon  which  the  writing  is  to  be  done 
upright — a  solidly  fixed  sheet  of  plate-glass  is 
best — the  edge  at  right  angles  to  the  face  and 
almost  against  the  nose  and  forehead;  attach 
sheets  of  quadrille  paper  upon  either  side  by 
clamps.  Thus  is  avoided  the  great  difficulties 
the  imagination  and  eyes  have  in  projecting 
outward  the  image  or  seeing  the  writing  which 
is  being  executed.  The  skewed,  indirect,  absurd- 
angled,  reversed,  and  illogical  writing  posture 
is  avoided,  and  the  upright  sheet  of  glass  is  as 
if  the  two-sided  mirror  were  placed  between 
the  two  cerebral  halves.  The  writer  should  be 
one  innocent  of  all  such  experiments,  i.e.,  not 
used  to  put  his  educated  consciousness  or  atten- 

107 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

tion  through  any  ''tricks"  or  tasks;  a  pencil 
should  be  in  each  hand,  the  points  on  the  sides 
opposite  to  each  other.  Neither  eye  can  now  be 
used  if  the  pencils  are  started  within  a  few 
inches  of  the  eyes,  so  that  the  eyes  may  be 
closed,  and  the  experiments  will  be  all  the  better 
for  the  free  working  of  the  attention  on  the 
surfaces  directly  in  front  of  the  eyes.  Syn- 
chronous writing  under  these  circumstances 
will,  in  the  righthanded,  always  show  normal 
style  with  the  right  hand,  and  mirror-style  with 
the  left — or  the  reverse  in  the  case  of  the  un- 
tampered-with  lefthanded.  Fix  the  attention 
of  the  righthanded  upon  his  lefthand  writing, 
and  command  it  to  write  normal,  and  compel  the 
right  to  make  some  movements;  it  will  make 
attempts  at  least,  at  mirror-style.  The  higher 
the  expertness  and  mental  culture  the  more 
certain  will  be  such  results.  On  the  table 
before  us  vision,  and  that  imagined  vision  we 
call  central  attention  (with  peripheral  vision 
abrogated),  controls  or  tries  to  control,  but  has 
so  many  difficulties  that  it  has  falsified  aijd 
confused  all  experimentation.  The  left  tries  to 
write  as  does  the  right.  My  device  removes 
confusing  factors  and  conditions,  and  proves 

108 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

that  everybody  normally  writes  mirror-style 
with  the  trailing-hand,  but  dependent  upon  the 
all-controlling  factor  of  the  direction  of  the 
writing,  and  upon  general  education,  imagina- 
tiveness, skill,  habit,  the  development  of  central 
attention,  etc.  Sign-language,  warfare,  etc., 
first  originated  the  habit  of  righteyedness  and 
so  of  its  resultant  righthandedness,  and  this 
necessitated  the  location  of  the  speech-center  in 
the  left  half-brain.  The  particular  incidence, 
now,  in  a  certain  child,  of  righthandedness  or 
lefthandedness,  depends  upon  which  is  the 
better  seeing  eye,  when  arm-and-hand  motion 
arise  and  are  co-ordinated  with  the  function  of 
the  precedent  and  governing  eye.  Heredity  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  matter  directly,  and  only 
indirectly,  in  making  the  right  eye  the  better 
seeing  eye  in  infancy,  and  when  the  habit  is 
established.  In  about  96  percent  the  right  is 
the  better  seeing  eye.  If  it  is  desired  to  make 
a  lefthanded  babe  normally  righthanded,  the 
process  must  be  begun  in  the  earliest  stages, 
and  by  means  of  giving  the  right  eye  the  better 
function.  This  may  now  be  held  impossible, 
although  atropine  in  the  left  eye  of  the  child 
with  beginning  lefthandedness  might  possibly 

109 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


be  efficacious.  Lei  no  one  attempt  it!  Pathology 
follows  almost  inevitably  any  interference  with 
Nature's  institution  of  handedness,  right  or 
left,  however  early  it  may  have  begun.  For  the 
mixed  type  is  far  worse,  and  usually  ends  in 
more  suffering  than  if  lefthandedness  were  of 
the  pure  type. 

In  two-handed  mirror-writing,  and  in  the 
work  of  the  trailing-hand,  there  is  more  than  a 
suggestive  hint,  there  is  an  intimate  glance  per- 
mitted into  the  mechanics  of  the  construction 
or  connections  of  the  two-sided  brain.  It  also 
comes  out  in  the  often-described  experiment  of 
writing  with  one,  and  then  with  the  other  hand 
upon  paper  while  looking  at  the  figure  being 
made  in  a  mirror  set  at  right  angles  vertically 
in  front.  In  a  righthanded  person  the  making 
of  a  square  or  triangle  with  the  dextral  hand 
is  possible  and  comparatively  easy,  but  on 
attempting  the  same  trick  with  the  sinistral 
hand,  without  forethought  and  quickly,  the  di- 
rection will  be  ludicrously  reversed.  Now, 
synchronous  two-handed  writing,  by  the  right- 
handed,  is  easier  and  more  conunonly  possible 
if  the  left  writes  mirror-style  and  the  other 
normal    style.      The    commissural    fibers,    the 

110 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

pattern-making  threads,  between  the  two  op- 
posed cerebral  mechanisms,  let  us  say  between 
the  two  patterned  or  figured  cloths,  seem  there- 
fore to  run  from  the  ''face,"  or  "right"  side 
of  one,  to  the  "back,"  "wrong,"  or  "seamy" 
side  of  the  other.  Changing  the  analogy  to 
that  of  two  mirrors,  the  face  of  the  mirror  on 
one  side  of  the  brain  reflects  and  normalizes  the 
figure  of  the  obverse  or  back  side  of  the  mirror 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  brain.  The  mirror 
or  cloth  erected  in  the  left-brain  of  the  right- 
handed  fronts  consciousness  and  its  figures  are 
normal,  while  that  in  the  trailing  side  is  mirror- 
writing,  or  is  the  "seamy,"  "wrong"  side  of 
the  cloth.  In  reference  to  the  eyes,  besides  the 
evident  facts  termed  righteyedness  and  left- 
eyedness,  one  of  an  equal  or  greater  importance 
comes  into  view  which  I  have  called  dominance. 
Usually  and  normally  a  righthanded  person  is 
righteyed,  and  a  lefthanded  one  is  lefteyed. 
That  is,  the  right  eye  is  normally  the  dominant 
one  in  the  righthanded,  and  the  left  eye  in  the 
lefthanded.  A  simple  test,  one  of  many  of  domi- 
nancy,  is  easily  made  and  thoroughly  convinc- 
ing.   Hold  the  pencil  or  finger  upright  a  foot 

from  the  eyes  in  the  median  line  and  observe  the 

111 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

image  it  makes  on  the  opposite  wall ;  closing  the 
left  eye  results  in  no  movement  of  the  image  on 
the  wall,  but  closing  the  right  or  dominant  eye 
throws  the  left  eye  into  hitherto  disused  or  non- 
selected  function,  and  the  image  "jmnps"  sud- 
denly to  the  right.  The  demonstration  of  the 
dominancy  of  the  right  is  thus  apparent;  the 
mind  must  not  be  confused  in  action  by  two  dif- 
ferently-placed images,  and  has  learned  to  ignore 
the  one  and  rely  upon  the  other.  And  it  ignores 
the  least  reliable  and  least  accurate  or  useful 
image,  which  is  the  left  in  the  dextral.  Cor- 
respondingly, of  course,  the  choice  is  reversed 
in  the  lefthanded  person.  And  it  is  as  evident 
that  a  high  degree  of  ametropia,  squint,  ambly- 
opia, or  other  disease,  of  the  naturally  domi- 
nant eye,  would  transfer  the  dominancy  to  the 
eye  of  the  other  side.  In  such  cases  the  mind 
and  entire  organism  is  morbidized,  decision  and 
action  are  confused,  delayed  or  inhibited  re- 
flexes are  necessitated,  stuttering  and  halting 
speech  or  thought  appears,  etc.  This  is  because 
the  right  eye  of  the  four-footed  animalian 
phylum  has  controlled  the  motion  and  placing 
of  the  right  front  foot,  guarded  the  right  side 
of  the  body,  etc.,  and  primarily  established  the 

112 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

great  law  that  co-operating  cerebral  centers 
must  be  in  the  same  cerebral  hemisphere  to 
render  decision  and  action  the  most  exact  and 
quick.  Contiguity  of  these  centers  insures 
accuracy  and  celerity,  while  the  location  of  one 
or  more  centers  in  the  opposite  hemisphere 
demands  the  intermediation  of  commissural 
nerves  between  the  two  halves,  with  which 
pathology  arises.  These  morbid  results  are 
painfully  evident  in  the  sudden  loss  in  adult 
life,  of^the  dominant  eye,  or  the  more  expert 
hand.  To  the  observant  they  are  equally  evi- 
dent in  those  naturally  and  healthily  lefthanded 
persons  made  morbid  by  the  morbid  ''ambi- 
dexterity" sillies.  These  persons  put  Nature 
to  the  foolish  task  of  creating  a  second  set  of 
subdominant  or  equidominant  cerebral  centers 
where,  according  to  God  and  common  sense, 
one  was  not  only  sufficient,  but  infinitely  better. 
In  such  cases  the  dominancy  of  one  eye  is  done 
away  with  and  an  equidominance  or  alternate 
dominance  is  established.  Two  images  of  the 
pencil  on  the  wall  are  seen,  and  neither  is 
unconsciously  to  be  ignored. 

Almost  the  sole  method  and  means  by  which 
we  come  into  large  and  intellectual  relations 

8  113 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

I  with  the  world  are  the  results  of  vision.  The 
/total  contributions  of  all  the  other  senses  com- 
pose but  a  fractional  part  of  the  ocular  ones. 
Intellect  itself  is  little  more  than  epitomized 
ancestral  visual  experience.  Nearly  all  our 
thinking  is  in  images,  pictures  of  things  seen, 
and  even  the  most  scientific,  even  the  most 
abstract  and  metaphysical  intellectual  processes 
are  only  seemingly  amorphous;  they  are  really 
like  the  crystalline  coal-measures  of  ancestral 
and  personal  visual  experiences.  The  difficulty 
is  to  draw  the  line  between  the  inherited  and  the 
individual  parts.  The  " tabula  rasa''  of  the 
infant  mind  is  by  no  means  blank,  but  its  in- 
heritances are  necessarily  abstract,  and  are 
vivified  and  definitized  by  the  daily  millionfold 
personal,  i.e.,  chiefly  retinal,  images  poured 
among  the  ancestral  carbon  strata  awaiting  the 
touch  of  reality  to  awaken  them  to  living  light 
and  heat.  A  truer  analogy  presents  in  lan- 
guage, the  fused  and  packed  epitome  and  record, 
the  composite  photogTaph,  in  fact,  of  racial  ex- 
perience. Nearer  far  to  his  personality  than 
any  other  or  all  other  products  of  Man's  being 
here,  the  most  immaterial,  most  spiritual  record 
of  his  existence,  is  his  language.     And  lan- 

114 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 


guages  are  almost  wholly  the  records  of  things 
seen.  The  greatest  deed  of  mankind  is  the 
creation  of  the  alphabet;  so  arduous  was  it 
in  fact  that  only  one  alphabet  has  been  evolved 
in  and  for  the  whole  world.  All  are  at  one  in 
the  conclusion  that  this  alphabet  is  the  sine 
qua  non  of  intellectual  development  and  of  the 
condition  we  call  civilization.  Well,  the  alpha- 
bet, as  all  know,  is  made  up  of  the  convention- 
alized pictures,  ideographs,  eye-made  images 
and  photographs  of  objective  scenes  and  things. 
The  seeing  of  things  correctly  is  the  foundation 
and  condition  of  knowing  things  rightly  and 
truly — i.e.,  of  civilized  living  and  scientific  think- 
ing. Conversely,  the  seeing  things  badly  and 
distortedly,  i.e.,  ametropically  and  with  optic 
morbidity,  is  the  source  to-day  of  more  suffer- 
ing and  improper  living  than  all  other  patho- 
genetic factors  combined.  In  all  past  time  the 
composite  of  millions  of  ancestral  visual  experi- 
ences have  been  forming  what  we  call  mind, 
intellect,  and  memory.  The  elimination  of  the 
visually  unfit  has  made  the  present-day  heir  of 
all  the  ages  the  product  of  predominatingly  and 
relatively  perfect  eyes.  Civilization  adds  an 
amazing  acuteness  to  the  present  tragedy  when 

115 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

an  ametropic  organism  comes  in  bitterest  per- 
sonal clash  with  the  inherited  datum  of  all  past 
experience.  ''Eyestrain"  is  thus  usually  the 
greatest  misfortune  which  can  happen  to  a  civil- 
ized ''near- worker."  It  morbidizes  mind  and 
body  and  is  wrecking  numberless  lives  all  about 
us.  Some  day  medicine  will  be  aroused  to  the 
amazing  reach  of  this  awful  truth,  and  in  that 
day  medicine,  and  especially  psychiatry  and 
neuropathology,  will  be  revolutionized. 

One  may  go  further  and  say  that  not  only  is 
human  life  and  civilization  itself  the  quint- 
essence of  summarized  visual  experience,  but 
the  very  development  and  evolution  of  biolo- 
gical forms  above  the  lowest  has  been  depen- 
dent upon  vision.  Ubi  motus  ibi  visus  est  is  the 
key  of  most  higher  organic  evolution.  Food  and 
defense  have  always  depended  upon  vision  and 
perfection  of  vision,  and  the  development  of 
more  perfect  vision  has  been  the  forerunning 
means  of  the  production  of  more  perfect  forms. 
The  Darwinian  exclusion  of  the  unfit  has  been 
largely  the  exclusion  of  the  visually  unfit,  and 
the  survival  of  the  fittest  has  been  the  survival 
of  those  possessing  the  best  ocular  mechanism. 
No  task  in  organofaction  has  been  so  difficult  of 

IIG 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

acliievement  and  of  healthy  preservation  as  that 
of  making  the  most  perfect  ocular  mechanism. 
One  of  the  most  inscrutable  and  important 
powers  of  the  psyche  is  attention,  but  is  it  not 
almost  entirely  a  product  of  visual  function? 
In  the  congenitally  blind  and  exaggeratedly 
ametropic  the  same  truth  comes  to  clearness. 
The  inherited  or  epitomized  experiences  of  the 
ancestry  have  operated  in  them,  and  in  all  of 
us,  to  beget  the  secondary  and  acquired  kind  of 
attention  which  we  have  in  varying  degree,  and 
which  may  be  called  mental,  intellectual,  or 
central — that  coming  to  view  with  deprivation 
of  visual  attention.  It  is  inaccurate  and  im- 
perfect, especially  topographically,  as  our 
illustrations,  even  from  a  highly  cultivated 
mind,  show.  The  fundamental  distinction  has 
not  been  emphasized  that  visual  attention  de- 
pends largely  and  chiefly  upon  the  following 
of  the  objectively  moving  thing  with  the  eyes, 
or  what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  upon  move- 
ments of  the  eyes  to  re-establish  sensitiveness 
of  the  retina.  Absolutely  persistent  gazing  at  an 
immovable  point  quickly  results  in  inability  to 
see  it.  The  moving  object  rivets  the  attention, 
and  so  long  as  it  is  visually  fixed  mental  or 

117 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


central  attention  and  visual  attention  are  fused 
into  unity.  There  is  no  possibility,  except  pos- 
sibly by  training,  of  attentively  observing  a 
moving  thing  like  the  pen-point  or  the  letters 
being  made  by  it,  while  at  the  same  time  mutu- 
ally and  continuously  attentive  to  another  train 
of  thought,  memory,  or  objective  happening. 
The  bimanual  writer  may  write  the  same  letters 
and  words  synchronously,  but  not  different 
words.  This  is  simply  because  the  eye  cannot 
see  different  words  being  written.  As  all  stu- 
dents have  agreed,  consciousness  or  attention 
is  like  a  simple  stream  of  sand  passing  through 
the  constricted  part  of  the  hour-glass.  The  at- 
tention of  an  expert  organ  player,  playing  with 
feet,  two  hands,  pulling  stops,  reading  several 
lines  of  notes,  varying  the  expression,  etc.,  each 
second,  seems  almost  to  contradict  the  validity 
of  the  hour-glass  comparison.  It  appears  to  be 
a  widely  spread-out  rain  of  attention,  different 
from  the  more  primitive  and  naive  or  hour- 
glass kind  of  the  rest  of  us.  But  even  this  is 
due,  I  believe,  to  an  acquired  ability  of  perceiv- 
ing and  acting  upon  the  perimacular  and  more 
peripherally  placed  images  of  the  retina.  Most 
of  us  actually  use  and  attend  to  the  macular 

118 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

image,  and  the  retina  beyond  is  used  only  to 
call  the  attention  of  the  eyes  to  an  object  not 
really  or  perfectly  visualized  and  perceived,  but 
which  by  ocular  motion  is  at  once  brought  upon 
the  macula  and  then  clearly  perceived.  Watch- 
ing an  organ-player  read  and  play  new  music 
shows  one  that  he  has  a  staring  and  indefinite 
expression,  which  argues  a  large  field  of  vision 
and  attention,  filled  with  many  objects,  all  held 
in  a  synchronous,  graded,  and  differing  clear- 
ness of  attention,  impossible  to  do  except  after 
long  education  and  practice.  And  this  exten- 
sion of  visual  attention  to  the  images  of  the 
notes,  keys,  etc.,  located  farther  and  farther 
beyond  the  macula,  requires  that  they  shall  be 
visually  and  essentially  correlated.  The  broad- 
ening of  attention  to  multiple  objects,  the  hold- 
ing in  synchronous  unity  seemingly  discrete 
streams  of  objects  and  influences,  seems,  there- 
fore, a  matter  of  education,  not  of  primary 
endowment,  of  progressive  development  and 
widening,  instead  of  abrogation  of  the  single- 
current,  and  depends  primarily  and  wholly  upon 
the  ocular  extension  of  the  synchronous  recog- 
nizability  of  correlated  images  falling  farther 
than  usual  beyond  the  macula. 

119 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

The  visual  central  (or  mental)  attention  is 
separable  from  the  peripheral  visual  attention 
only  when  peripheral  visual  attention  is  abro- 
gated. That  this  central  attention  is  derived 
from  the  visual,  is  its  pale,  possibly  ludicrously 
inexact  reflex,  is  apparent,  even  without  the 
striking  demonstrations  shown  in  the  writing 
illustrations  given  herewith.  It  is  essentially 
of  the  nature  of  a  2ns  aller,  reminding  one  of  the 
pathetic  almost  incoherent  falsetto  of  the  ac- 
quired speech  of  the  deaf  mute.  By  long  culti- 
vation it  gains  precision  in  the  mind  of  the 
orator,  musician,  etc.,  but  the  extramacular 
education  of  the  retinas  lies  at  the  foundation 
of  the  proficiency. 

The  origin  of  righthandedness  and  lefthand- 
edness  I  have  elsewhere  set  forth  in  detail,  but 
must  here  epitomize.  There  is  no  reason  to 
suspect  even  the  most  vague  or  far-away  begin- 
nings in  animals.  So  long  as  the  four  feet  are 
used  for  locomotion  there  could  be  no  lateral 
differentiation  of  function.  I  have  watched  for 
it  in  squirrels  that  use  their  front  paws  to  hold 
nuts,  cats  that  strike  at  insects  in  the  air,  or 
play  with  wounded  mice,  and  in  many  other 

animals,  but  I  am  sure  that  to  neither  paw  is 

120 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

preference  assigned.  There  is  thus  probably 
no  dominancy  of  either  eye  in  animals.  Even 
in  the  monkeys  and  gorillas,  who  of  all  animals 
most  use  the  forepaws  as  hands,  one  catches  no 
suggestion  of  preferential  use  or  superior  ex- 
pertness  in  the  dextral  or  sinistral  side.  (My 
very  intelligent  dog,  trained  to  ' '  shake  hands ' ' 
with  his  right  paw,  lost  his  right  eye,  and  after 
that  he  always  offered  the  left  paw.)  But  in 
the  lowest  human  savages  all  over  the  world 
choice  or  greater  expertness  of  one  hand  is  as 
clearly  present  as  in  civilized  races.  No  sav- 
ages, however,  are  so  near  animalian  conditions 
as  to  exhibit  its  differentiating  origins.  Fixed 
in  all  our  military  and  social  customs,  and  living 
at  the  base  of  language  itself  are  two  facts 
which  solve  the  riddle  and  make  clear  whence 
and  how  righthandedness  arose.  In  all  tribes 
and  countries  since  man  used  implements  of 
offense  and  defence,  the  sinistral  or  cardiac  side 
was  protected  by  the  shield  and  the  sinistral 
hand  was  called  the  shield-hand,  as  the  dextral 
was  called  the  spear-hand.  Next  to  fighting 
and  synchronous  with  it  was  the  need  of  barter, 
and  the  fundamental  condition  of  bartering  was 
counting  with  the  low  numbers,  one  to  ten.     The 

121 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

fingers  of  the  free  or  dextral  liand  were  of 
course  first  used,  and  all  fingers  are  to-day 
called  digits,  as  are  the  figures  themselves,  and 
the  basis  of  our  numberings  is  the  decimal  or 
ten-fingered  system.  The  tally-stick,  notched 
or  numbered,  is  the  record  of  the  digits  held  in 
the  air.  Every  drill  and  action  of  the  soldier 
from  Xenophon  to  West  Point  is  dextral  in 
every  detail.  The  dominancy  of  the  right  eye 
is  shown  in  firing  from  the  right  shoulder  and 
sighting  with  the  right  eye.  I  have  two  pa- 
tients, lefthanded  in  every  respect,  who  have 
been  taught  to  fire  their  guns  from  the  right 
shoulder;  but  of  course  they  are  lefteyed,  and 
they  depress  the  right  eye  below  the  level  of  the 
gun,  and  sight  with  the  dominant  left  eye. 
Rightfootedness,  less  differentiated  of  course, 
must  follow  righthandedness  and  righteyedness, 
so  that  all  soldiers  (and  free  masons,  too)  must 
step  off  with  the  left  foot  first,  i.e.,,  the  spring 
must  be  made  with  the  right.  The  loss  of  the 
right  hand,  or  right  eye,  mutilations,  etc.,  very 
common  in  barbaric  times,  would  help  to 
account  for  the  preservation  of  the  present  four 
percent  of  lefthanded  people. 

Because  the  underlying  and  governing  condi- 

122 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

tion  wliy  the  man  must  be  generally  dextral,  or 
generally  sinistral,  is  the  evident  necessity  that 
the  centers  governing  a  co-ordinated  set  of  func- 
tions,  must  be  located  in  the  same  cerebral 
hemisphere.  To  make  any  important  act  pre- 
cise, purposive,  harmoniously,  and  rapidly 
effective,  several  interacting  and  fusing  cere- 
bral centers  must  conjoin  their  functions : 
Vision,  the  chief  of  all,  must  present  the  prob- 
lem, determine  the  spacial  or  topographical 
relations,  etc.;  hearing,  smell,  taxis,  etc.,  may 
or  may  not  enter  into  the  matter  as  auxiliaries ; 
memory  of  past  facts,  stored  chiefly  in  the  same 
side  of  the  brain,  undoubtedly  is  called  upon 
for  other  data  (and  memory  is  almost  entirely 
a  gallery  of  stored  photographs  made  by  the 
eye!) — ^then  judgment  and  decision,  working 
upon  the  data  gathered  from  all  subordinates, 
issues  in  the  word  which  is  the  seal  of  volition, 
and  in  act  which  is  reality  or  the  incorporation 
of  the  psyche  in  objective  sense  and  effect,  in 
the  materiality  beyond  cancellation  or  change. 
The  essence  of  the  matter  is,  therefore,  were  the 
chief  of  the  contributing  centers  creating  word 
and  act  divided  between  the  two  cerebral  hemi- 
spheres, the  certainty  and  celerity  of  the  word 

123 


\ 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

and  act  would  be  lessened  by  the  difficulty  and 
delay  consequent  upon  fusing  the  products  of 
these  remotely  placed  and  poorly  united  centers. 
Hence  the  law  that  the  better  expertness  of  the 
chief  dextral  organs  requires  that  the  other 
co-operating  organs,  also  more  expert,  must 
also  be  upon  the  dextral  side.  And  vice  versa  of 
sinistral  expertness.  The  centers  of  all  organs 
contributing  to  the  composite  terminal  act  must 
be  in  the  same  cerebral  hemisphere.  All  physi- 
ology and  pathology  show  that  the  speech 
center,  a  single  organ,  can  be  and  is  located  in 
only  one  side  of  the  brain,  sinistrocerebral  in 
the  righthanded,  and  that  the  hand  which 
executes  the  writing  act,  the  most  intellectual 
of  all  acts,  dominates  the  location  of  the  speech- 
center  in  the  opposite  half -brain.  The  "ambi- 
dextral" societies,  the  mothers  and  school 
teachers,  who  would  martyrize  children  natu- 
rally lefthanded  by  compelling  them  to  learn  an 
equal  expertness  of  the  right  hand,  are  the  most 
blunderful  of  stupid  persons.  No  person  ever 
was  or  ever  can  be  made  equally  expert  with 
both  hands,  and  every  attempt  results  in 
tragedy  for  the  patient.  To  carry  out  the 
egregious    plan    thoroughly,    flutes,    half    the 

124 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING^ 

violins,  carpenters'  and  mechanics'  tools,  etc., 
and  half  the  pianos  should  be  made  for  the 
dextral  ' '  ambidextralists, "  and  half  for  the 
sinistral  ''ambidextralists."  All  musicians 
should  play  half  the  time  lefthanded  and  half 
righthanded  on  reversed  piano  keyboards,  re- 
versely strung  violins,  etc. ;  all  carpenters  and 
mechanics  should  work  one  day  righthanded 
and  the  next  lefthanded,  with  suitable  tools ;  all 
soldiers  drill  lefthanded  and  leftfooted  one  day, 
and  the  reverse  the  ensuing  day,  etc.,  etc.  What 
a  world  it  would  be  if  those  who  are  wiser  than 
God  and  Nature  had  their  way ! 

Were  it  so,  all  laws  and  customs  as  to  the 
*'Rule  of  the  Road"  would  have  to  be  changed 
so  that  carriages,  foot-passengers,  etc.,  should 
pass  half  the  time  to  the  left  and  half  to  the 
right.  All  double-track  railroads  would  then 
order  trains  to  pass  one  day  to  the  right  and 
the  next  to  the  left,  and  their  locomotive-en- 
gineers would  then  sit  half  the  time  on  the  right 
side  of  their  cabs,  and  the  other  half  on  the 
left  side.  It  took  a  whole  generation  time  of 
experiments  and  mechanics  to  learn  that  the 
engineer  must  stand  or  sit  on  the  right  side  of 
his  engine  or  cab  in  order  that  he  could  look 

125 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


ahead  with  his  right  or  dominant  eye  only,  and 
without  sticking  his  entire  head  out,  as  he  would 
have  to  do  if  he  sat  or  stood  on  the  left  side. 
The  railroad  men  never  learned  why  this  is  so, 
do  not  know  why  to-day,  and  to  make  the  desir- 
able change  in  three  American  left-passing 
double-track  railroads,  while  it  would  finallv 
avoid  expense  and  accidents,  would  cost  at  once 
many  millions  of  dollars.  Thousands  of  years 
ago  knights  and  men  fighting  on  foot  or  horse- 
back had  to  approach  and  pass  each  other  on  the 
left  in  order  to  strike  or  spear  each  other  with 
the  right  hand  while  the  shield-hand  held  the 
shield  or  the  reins.  The  railway  engineer,  civil 
or  locomotive,  does  not  know  that  the  knight 
was  his  righthanded  and  righteyed  progenitor 
and  endower. 

A  flood  of  light  is  thrown  upon  history, 
sociology,  and  medicine,  especially  upon  psy- 
chology^, neurology,  and  psychiatry,  by  left- 
handedness  and  its  sequels.  Of  every  million 
born  at  least  30,000,  probably  more,  are  natu- 
rally lefthanded,  so  that  in  the  United  States 
there  are  nearly  3,000,000,  and  in  the  world  over 
45,000,000,  thus  handicapped.  An  indefinite 
proportion  of  these  have  been   or   are  being 

126 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 


doubly  cursed  by  the  efforts  of  the  foolish 
parent  or  teachers  to  make  them  righthanded. 
Sad  suggestions  and  illustrations  of  the  baleful 
results  of  the  work  of  these  improvers  of 
Nature  exist  in  such  simple  facts  as  that  right, 
which  should  mean  only  dextral  or  righthanded, 
has  come  to  mean  good,  moral,  advisable;  and 
left,  or  sinistral,  has  become  sinister,  awkward, 
unlucky,  to  be  avoided,  both  person  and  thing. 
Dexterity  and  dextrousness,  properly  meaning 
only  dextrality,  have  become  synonymous  with 
expertness  and  exceptional  proficiency,  whereas 
everybody  knows  that  the  lefthanded  person,  if 
purely  so,  is  as  cunning  of  hand  as  the  right- 
handed.  Even  the  superstition  of  the  ''evil 
eye" — the  nondominant  one — teaches  the  same 
lesson.  In  all  ages,  and  now  surely,  there  are 
everywhere  strange  and  unaccountable  cases  of 
"failure  in  life,"  "peculiar,"  "odd,"  "awk- 
ward" folk,  cranks  of  a  hundred  types,  misfits, 
stutterers,  and  all  that.  What  a  light  the  mis- 
placement of  the  cerebral  center  for  speech  and 
writing,  or  its  pernicious  double  placing  and 
maleducation  and  crippling  by  "  ambidextral- 
ists,"  throws  upon  the  origin  and  fate  of  many 
stutterers,  and  upon  many  of  the  "hopelessly 


127 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

stupid, ' '  the  laggards  in  school !  How  many  of 
the  medieval  court  jesters  and  the  derided,  the 
town-fools,  the  kyphotics,  and  cripples  were  the 
products  of  the  ''sinister"  superstition  of  the 
righthanded  tyrants'?  And  how  many  of  the 
morbid-minded  and  insane? 

Incidental  and  accidental  results  of  the  study 
of  these  cases  would  solve  many  problems  and 
mysteries  of  medicine,  and  surely  of  psy- 
chology. Pathology  is  physiology  gone  astray. 
The  thorough-going  study  of  individual  cases 
of  aberrant  neurology  will  be  found  to  illumine 
many  of  the  dark  places  of  mental  and  moral 
genesis,  function  and  law. 


No.  laL  and  No.  IftR  illustrate  the  natural 
ordinary  single-hand,  or  discrete,  writing,  each 
made  under  the  influence  of  the  visual  (which 

128 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

also  includes  the  central,  mental,  or  intellectual) 
attention.  In  each  case  the  writing  is  equally 
clear,  equally  respecting  the  laws  of  symmetry, 
and  equally  correct  in  topography,  direction, 
localization  in  space,  etc.  The  slant  of  the  let- 
ters, a  visual  result,  is  in  each  case  that  common 
in  dextromanual  writers,  and  in  sinistromanual 
writers.  It  should  be  borne  in  attention  that 
these  slantings  of  the  individual  letters  are  in 
occidental  nations  dictated  by  visual  function 
and,  when  unconscious,  are  always  present; 
they  are  preserved  even  in  the  most  peculiar 
or  abnormal  of  the  tests  to  follow.  The  origins 
of  these  slants  I  have  set  forth  elsewhere. 
Noteworthy  in  the  illustrations  above  is  the  fact 
that  the  sinistromanual  writing  does  not  fill  the 
allotted  3  3-8  in.,  but  is  condensed  laterally,  not 
vertically,  so  that  relatively  the  object  occupies 
only  about  three-fourths  of  the  longitudinal 
space  taken  by  the  dextromanual  writing.  It 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  ''patient"  or 
''subject"  was  congenitally  lefthanded,  but  by 
practice  and  lifelong  habit  a  dextromanual 
writer.  The  preservation,  under  these  circum- 
stances, of  a  sinistromanual  proficiency  equal  to 
that  of  the  dextromanual  is  significant,  both  for 

9  129 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

the  neurologist  and  for  the  "ambidexterity" 
societies. 


No.  l&L  and  No.  IfeR,  also  written  separately 
with  closed  eyes,  bring*  out  the  effects  of  the 
absence  of  visual  attention.  Central  attention 
alone  appears  to  be  at  best  a  somewhat  vague 
and  inaccurate  representation  and  product  of 
visual  attention,  yielding  want  of  sense  of  direc- 
tion (slanting  of  the  left  line  upward,  of  the 
right  downward  to  an  equal  degree),  and  rela- 
tively equal  inaccuracies  in  the  forms  of 
individual  letters  in  both  samples.  That  the 
topographic  or  spacial  sense  is  the  direct 
product  of  visual  attention  is  again  suggested 
by  the  fact  that,  without  its  aid,  the  central 
attention  reverses  the  result  seen  in  laL  and 
laR,  as  to  filling  of  the  allotted  longitudinal  or 

130 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

lateral  space.  With  the  left  hand  (right  cere- 
bral center)  it  fills  the  entire  space,  with  the 
right  hand  (left  cerebral  center)  only  about 
three-fourths  is  occupied.  Lack  of  the  influence 
of  the  acquired  and  inherited  visual  attention 
has  therefore  generally  an  effect  in  laterally 
contracting  the  space-content  in  the  acquired 
dextromanual  habit,  and  correspondingly  en- 
larging that  of  the  congenital  and  disused 
sinistromanual  habit.  The  inheritance  of 
spacial  sense  of  all  past  ancestors  requires  the 
instant's  influence,  in  the  act,  of  visual  attention 
to  insure  the  best  accuracv. 


2*  L 

No.  2aL  and  No.  2aR  are  synchronous  writ- 
ings, under  the  influence  of  visual  attention 
(which  'includes  central  attention)  upon  the 
forms  made  by  the  dextral  hand.  The  sinistral 
is  here  the  hand  of  nonattention ;  let  us  call  it 

131 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

The  Trailing  Hand.  Although  for  writing  it  is 
the  life-long  habitually  disused  hand,  it  was 
the  one  first  used  and  habited  in  writing,  and 
its  central  mechanism  in  the  right  cerebral  half- 
brain  has  preserved  perfection  of  function, 
despite  disuse,  and  "trails"  more  perfectly 
than  the  dextral  in  the  next  example,  2feE.  The 
lateral  space  is  again  less  completely  filled  by 
the  sinistral  hand,  although  it  is  the  ' '  trailer. ' ' 

No.  2&L  and  No.  2&R  were  written  under  the 
same  conditions  as  No.  2aL  and  No.  2aR,  i.e., 
synchronously  without  visual  attention,  but 
with  visual  and  central  attention  fixed  upon  the 
sinistral  movements,  the  dextral  hand  being  the 
trailer.  The  sinistral  space  again  is  not  filled ; 
the  accuracy  and  perfection  of  the  writing  of 
the  sinistral  is  a  little  better  than  in  No. 
2rtL,  but  the  noteworthy  fact  appears  that  al- 

132 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

though  the  central  mechanism  of  the  dextral 
hand  has  been  the  life-long  habitually  functional 
one,  its  natural  repugnance,  unfitness,  etc.,  is 
shown  when  it  is  deprived  of  the  factor  of  visual 
and  central  attention,  the  individual  letters 
being  generally  slovenly  formed,  the  i  not 
dotted,  etc.  It  trails  worse  than  the  sinistral 
despite  its  education. 


id-L 


The  effect  of  depriving  synchronous  bilateral 
writing  of  visual  attention  is  shown  in  2cL,  2cR, 
2dlj,  and  2^R.    In  the  2c  series  central  atten- 

133 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

tion  was  fixed  upon  the  dextromanual  move- 
ments, the  sinistral  hand  being  the  trailer.  In 
the  2d  series  the  central  attention  is  fixed  upon 
the  sinistromanual  movements,  the  dextral  hand 
becoming  the  trailer.  In  both  cases  the  sinis- 
tral writing  is  the  more  condensed  laterally. 
The  effect  of  synchronously  carrying  on  the 
bilateral  movements  (without  visual  attention 
and  only  with  mental  attention)  is  not  so  bad 
upon  the  sinistral  as  upon  the  dextral  writing, 
even  when  the  sinistral  is  the  trailer  and  the 
dextral  has  the  advantage  of  central  attention. 
No  amount  of  habit  or  usage  abrogates  the 
primal  trend  towards  lefthandedness  or  makes 
the  acquired  writing  expertness  of  the  dextral 
hand  equal  to  it. 

Series  3  further  illustrates  the  general  laws 
already  observed  by  the  condition  of  mirror- 
writing.     No.  3a  shows  the  ability  of  tliis  sub- 

134 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 


ject  to  write  with  either  hand,  alone,  and  with 
visual  attention  directed  to  the  movements.  By 
looking  through  the  paper,  back  to  the  eyes,  or 
by  the  use  of  a  hand  mirror,  one  sees  that  the 
mirroring  or  reversing  of  the  dextral  hand  is 
less  perfectly  and  correctly  done  than  with  the 
sinistral  mechanism.  The  subject  says  of  this 
that  with  the  sinistral  hand  the  reversal  is 
''done  easily,  rapidly,  and  automatically," 
while  with  the  dextral  hand  it  is  carried  out 
"with  difficulty  and  slowly." 


li-Xi 


A-^O^^ 


The  effect  of  the  deprivation  of  visual  atten- 
tion upon  mirror-writing  shown  in  3fe  series 
further  illustrates  the  foregoing  suggestions. 
Each  is  written  separately,  and  by  the  aid  of 

135 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

central  attention  only.  "The  right  reverses 
just  as  badly"  as  in  the  case  immediately  pre- 
ceding. The  sinistral  hand  does  its  work  far 
better  than  the  dextral  under  the  disadvantage, 
and  the  comparative  loss  of  the  sense  of  direc- 
tion and  space-relation  is  strikingly  manifest. 
For  the  first  time  is  shown  the  tendency,  slight 
in  the  sinistral  hand,  marked  in  the  dextral, 
towards  a  declination,  and  a  double  one,  of  the 
two  words,  from  the  right  to  the  left,  i.e.,  in  the 
direction  in  which  the  mirror  writing  proceeds. 
The  sinistral  writing  is  again  the  more  con- 
densed. 


\ 


^^z; 


3^^ 


The  complications  of  the  problem,  as  well  as 
of  the  interest,  increase  in  the  remarkable 
(unique?)  ability  of  this  subject  to  execute 
mirror-writing  with  both  hands  synchronously. 

13G 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 


The  results  are  shown  in  3cL  and  3cR,  written 
with  the  visual  (and  central)  attention  fixed 
upon  the  movements  of  the  sinistromanual  pen. 
The  trailing  dextral  is  the  worst  so  far  in  all 
respects — either  as  to  formation  of  the  letters, 
declination,  and  even  overlapping  of  the  lines 
from  right  to  left,  and  overrunning  of  the  space 
both  lateral  and  vertical.  The  topographic  or 
space-limits  are  little  recognized  or  observed, 
and  character  or  individuality  of  the  writing  is 
lost.  But  here  arises  the  most  noteworthy  and 
significant  statement  of  the  subject:  ^'I  find 
that  I  cannot  execute  what  would  be  the  logi- 
cally preceding  series,  i.e.,  when  the  mind  is 
fixed  upon  the  right-hand  movements.  TJiep 
will  not  go."  Nature  flatly  balked  and  refused 
to  budge.  Motion  was  entirely  inhibited  with 
the  attempt  at  two-handed  mirror  writing  when 
visual  attention  was  fixed  upon  the  dextro- 
manual  movements.  Such  writing  could  only 
be  carried  out  when  the  dextral  was  the  trailing- 
hand.  In  this  case  there  was,  therefore,  suffi- 
cient perfection  of  the  dextromanual  mechanism 
to  trail,  that  is,  to  act,  and  badly,  as  an  auto- 
maton, by  the  aid  of  the  more  perfect,  though 
disused  initiative  of  the   sinistromanual   one. 

137 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


To  initiate  was  impossible  when  it  had  to  supply 
subordinate  directing  force  and  control  to  the 
trailing  sinistral  hand. 


3^2* 


V" 


1 


^ 


J^^ 


When  deprived  of  visual  attention  by  the  aid 
of  central  attention  alone,  synchronous  mirror- 
writing,  with  both  hands,  again  repeats  and 
accentuates  the  preceding  conclusions.  This  is 
shown  in  Sdh  and  3dR.  Again  the  central  at- 
tention is  fixed  upon  the  left-hand  movements; 
the  right  is  still  able  to  trail,  but  notice  the 
lateral  concentration  of  the  two  words  deprived 
of  the  control  of  visual  attention,  the  degrada- 
tion of  form  of  all  the  letters,  almost  to  inde- 
cipherability,  the  sharp  declination  of  the  line- 
direction  from  the  dextral  to  the  sinistral  side, 
etc.    The  space-sense  or  topographic  conscious- 

138 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

ness  is  nearly  lost.  The  trailing  has  become  so 
inaccurate  and  wretched  as  to  be  denominated 
vagrancy.  And  of  course  with  mental  or  cen- 
tral attention  only  fixed  upon  the  dextromanual 
task  there  is  even  a  more  absolute  impossibility 
than  in  series  3c  of  executing  any  legible  or 
orderly  movements  whatsoever.  ''They  will 
not  go."  But  even  when  deprived  of  visual 
attention  the  central  attention  upon  the  sinis- 
tral hand  is  able  to  make  fair  copy,  and  to  do 
much  toward  helping  out  the  trailing  dextral. 
No  amount  of  use  and  education  could  give  the 
dextral  mechanism  the  initiative  and  effective- 
ness retained  by  the  thirty-five-year-long  dis- 
used sinistrocerebral  centers. 


^^Ti 


The  task  remained  of  writing  synchronously 
with  both  hands,  nonnal  style  with  one  hand, 

139 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

mirror  style  with  the  other.  No.  4aL  and  No. 
4aR  is  the  first  illustration,  made  with  visual 
attention  fixed  upon  the  dextromanual  move- 
ments. In  this  case  the  dextral  hand  writes 
normal  style,  the  sinistral  mirror  style.  The 
trailing  sinistral  line  climbs  a  little  as  it  moves 
onward,  but  the  character,  accuracy,  etc.,  are 
well  preserved  in  both. 


^(rL 


In  Nos.  4&L  and  4&R  the  visual  attention  is 
fix:ed  upon  the  sinistral  hand ;  the  dextromanual 
writing  is  in  normal  style,  the  sinistromanual  in 
mirror  style.  The  writings  are  synchronously 
executed.  That  of  the  dextral  hand  is  more 
inco-ordinate,  tends  still  more  than  before  to 
overrun  the  lateral  limits,  ascends  as  it  pro- 
ceeds, etc.,  but  both   are  easily  legible.     The 

140 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 


superior  initiative  and  controlling  power  of  the 
dextrocerebral  mechanism  is  re-exemplified. 


VfrC 


Nos.  4cL  and  4cE  repeat  Nos.  4aL  and  4aR, 
with  the  exception  that  the  movements  are  de- 
prived of  the  guidance  and  control  of  visual 
attention.  The  tasks  are  synchronous,  of  both 
hands,  and  the  central  attention  in  this  instance 
is  fixed  upon  the  movements  of  the  dextro- 
manual  pen.  The  dextral  hand  leads  and  writes 
normal  style,  the  sinistral  trails  and  writes 
mirror  style.  Both  lines  decline  from  a  hori 
zontal  somewhat  as  they  proceed.  Although 
the  mental  attention  is  upon  the  dextromanual 
movements,  the  sinistral  hand  restricts  its  work 
to  normal  and  usual  lateral  limits,  while  the 
difl&culty  of  its  task,  in  originating  and  con- 

141 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

trolling  the  trailer,  seems  to  make  the  dextral 
lose  the  sense  of  space  limits  heretofore  ob- 
served. But  even  here  the  legibility  of  the 
writing  of  the  sinistromanual  trailer  is  well 
preserved. 


In  Nos.  4:dlj  and  4f/R  the  conditions  of  the 
last  test  are  observed,  except  that  the  central 
attention  is  fixed  upon  the  sinistromanual 
movements.  The  level  of  the  lines  is  better 
kept;  legibility  of  both  writings  is  good;  the 
lateral  limits  of  space  are  preserved  or  ex- 
ceeded in  the  same  way  as  in  4cL  and  4cE. 

In  Nos.  5aL  and  5aR  the  sinistral  hand  writes 
normal  style  and  the  dextral  writes  mirror  style 
synchronously.  Visual  attention  is  permitted 
and  fixes  the  sinistromanual  movements,  which 
climb  a  little,  but  which  result  is  legible  writing. 

142 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

But  the  associated  ones  of  the  trailing  dextral 
hand  become  almost  illegible  and  have  lost 
nearly  all  sense  of  orderly  topographic  con- 
sciousness. As  in  the  3c  series  the  subject 
again  explains  that  ''it  will  not  go  with  the 
visual  attention  fixed  on  the  right-hand  move- 
ments. ' '    The  stint  was  found  impossible.    And 


sSSZ 


of  the  greatest  significance  is  the  further  state- 
ment that  "this  form  of  reversal  was  always 
the  least  satisfactory,  and  is  not  now  so  good 
as  it  used  to  be."  Later,  upon  request,  Miss 
K.  writes:  ''Some  time  before  I  was  twenty  I 
discovered  that  I  could  do  this  reverse  writing, 
and  since  then  I  have  occasionally  amused  my 
friends  by  doing  it,  but  very  seldom.  Until  I 
did  this  for  you  it  is  surely  five  years  since 

143 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

I  last  tried  it.  I  did  not  notice  the  inability  to 
do  this  particular  specimen  less  well  imtil  I 
tried  it  this  time  for  you.  I  have  no  specimens 
written  in  the  past."  The  co-ordination  of  the 
two  cerebral  hemispheres  is  therefore  losing  an 
acquired  function  or  aspect,  and  reverting  to  a 
desirable  and  natural  singleness  or  mono- 
laterality.  Confusion,  awkwardness,  inhibition, 
indecision,  or  imperfection  of  function  must  fol- 
low decision  or  action  initiated  or  controlled  by 
centers  co-operating  from  different  sides  of 
the  cerebrum. 


^^^ 


The  limit  of  illegibility  and  loss  of  the  sense 
of  spacial  relations  is  shown  in  Nos.  56L  and 
56E,  written  under  the  conditions  imposed  in 
5a,  except  that  the  sinistromanual  movements 

144 


TWO-HANDED  SYNCHRONOUS  WRITING 

were  deprived  of  the  help  of  visual  attention. 
Of  course  it  was  again  wholly  impossible  to 
write  anything  whatever  when  the  mental  atten- 
tion was  fixed  upon  the  dextromanual  writing 
movements. 


10  145 


CHAPTER  V. 

VISUAL   FUNCTION    THE    CAUSE    OF    SLANTED    HAND- 
WRITING;   ITS   RELATION   TO    SCHOOL   HYGIENE, 
SCHOOL  DESKS,  MALPOSTURE,  SPINAL 
CURVATURE,    AND    MYOPIA.* 

Slanted  Handivriting  is  Bad,  hut  not  because 
of  Bad  Reasons. — Careful  and  trustworthy 
statistics  show  that  on  the  average  27  percent 
of  the  pupils  in  the  primary  grades  of  the 
schools  of  Europe  have  lateral  spinal  curva- 
ture. The  fact  is  as  terrifying  as  the  greatest 
in  pathology,  as  bad,  for  instance,  as  the  preva- 
lence of  tuberculosis.  There  is  no  reason  to 
doubt  that  American  children  are  less  scoliotic 
than  those  of  Lausanne,  Dresden,  etc.  If  not 
actually  crying  out  against  slanted  handwriting 
and  school-desks  as  the  causes  of  this  appalling 
disease,  almost  all  orthopedists  and  school 
hygienists  admit  or  suggest  it.  And  yet  slant 
handwriting  is  not  only  not  the  cause  of  the 
writing  malposture  and  of  scoliosis,  it  is  only  a 
minor  effect  of  the  writ^g  malposture.    It  is 


Medical  Record,  April  22,  1905 ;  Biographic  Clinics,  Vol.  iii. 

146 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


not  only  an  effect,  but,  bad  as  it  is,  it  is  a 
method  of  avoiding  worse  malposture.  To  no 
one  could  such  a  style  of  writing  be  more  re- 
pulsive than  to  me,  and  yet,  as  one  must  so 
often  emphasize,  the  bad  reason  does  not  make 
it  bad.  The  reasons  for  vertical  vs.  slanted 
handwriting  must  be  scientific  and  true  or  the 
slanting  will  never  be  done  away  with.  There 
are  considerations  very  different,  and  of  in- 
finitely more  importance  than  the  slanting  itself, 
why  such  writing  must  be  abolished. 

Factors  of  the  Writing  Malposture. — All  acts 
or  habits  are  wrong  some  of  the  time,  and  some 
acts  or  habits  are  partly  wrong  all  of  the  time. 
Only  the  act  of  writing,  as  commonly  carried 
out,  is  wholly  wrong  all  the  time. 

1.  In  a  state  of  rest  every  object  illustrates 
and  obeys  the  law  of  gravity,  equilibrium,  or 
architecture,  which  demands  that  its  center  of 
gravity  must  be  vertically  above  its  base  or 
point  of  support.  A  feeling  of  strain  or  irrita- 
tion arises  in  the  mind  when  natural  objects  do 
not  conform  to  this  law.  Tumbling-down 
chirography  does  not  obey  this  law. 

2.  The  letters  of  the  alphabet  are  convention- 
alized pictures  or  ideograms  of  the  pictograms 

147 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

or  pictures  of  natural  objects — the  ox,  horse, 
camel,  door,  window,  hook,  serpent,  hand,  fish, 
water,  eye,  mouth,  head,  etc.  These  prototypes, 
of  course,  obeyed  the  law  of  gravity  in  Phoe- 
nician and  Semitic  times  as  they  do  now.  The 
modern  written  letters  of  the  alphabet  should 
do  the  same. 

3.  All  printed  and  type-written  letters  and 
musical  notes  preserve  the  erect  position.  The 
handmade  letters  should  conform  to  the  rule. 

4.  The  slant  method  of  writing  is  a  result  of 
the  writer's  personal  difficulties,  but  the  char- 
acter of  the  writing  is,  or  should  be,  dictated  by 
the  consideration  of  the  reader's  sake,  not 
because  of  the  writer's  personal  or  pathologic 
trouble. 

5.  More  important  than  all  the  foregoing  is 
the  fact  that  the  vast  majority  of  all  persons 
have  some  astigmatism,  and  about  95  percent 
of  all  astigmatisms  are  at  or  about  the  axes  90° 
and  180°,  and  such  eyes  demand  the  prevailing 
lines  of  things  seen  at  90°  or  180°. 

Even  if  no  astigmatism  is  present,  or  if  that 
which  is  present  is  not  in  the  neighborhood  of 
90°  or  180°,  the  habit  of  equilibrium,  and  the 
inheritance  from  all  ancestors  of  the  habit  of 

148 


THE  WRITING^POSTURE 


holding  the  head  erect  and  of  seeing  with  the 
eyes  coincident  with  the  usual  90°  and  180° 
axes,  would  compel  the  customary  position. 

The  secondary  factors,  which  determine  the 
posture  and  malposture  of  the  body,  and  the 
character  of  the  handwriting,  vertical,  slanted, 
or  otherwise  improper,  are : 

1.  The  position  or  posture  of  the  head. 

2.  The  position  or  posture  of  the  body. 

3.  The  location  of  the  paper  upon  the  desk. 

4.  The  angling  or  skewing  of  the  paper  as 
regards  the  right  angles  of  the  desk  top  or 
writing  board. 

5.  The  flatness  or  inclination  of  the  desk 
top  or  writing  board. 

6.  The  relative  height  and  distance  apart  of 
the  desk  and  seat. 

7.  The  position  of  the  hand,  method  of  hold- 
ing the  penholder,  etc. 

8.  The  necessity  of  parallelism  between  the 
vertical  axis  of  the  head,  or  what  is  the  same 
thing,  of  the  90°  axes  of  astigmatism  of  the 
eyes,  and  the  vertical  lines,  real,  supposed,  or 
presented  by  the  formed  lines  of  the  written 
letters. 

9.  The  relative  position  of  the  right  or  domi- 

149 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

nant  eye,  and  the  unhindered  meeting  of  the 
visual  axes  of  both  eyes,  upon  what  may  be 
called  the  writing-field,  i.e.,  the  space  at  and 
about  the  pen-point. 

Briefly  epitomized,  this  etiologic  factor  arises 
from  a  bending  of  the  head  to  the  left,  skewing 
of  the  paper,  etc.,  in  writing,  in  order  that  both 
eyes  of  the  writer  may  have  a  clear  view  of  the 
writing-field  or  space  about  the  pen-point.  And 
especially  by  the  right  or  dominant  eye,  the  one 
corresponding  in  function,  and  particularly  in 
writing,  with  the  righthandedness  (expertness) 
of  the  righthanded  person.  This  canting  of  the 
head  to  the  left  produces  a  functional  cervical 
curve  with  the  convexity  to  the  right,  wliich  I 
suggest  is  the  primary  factor  in  the  formation 
of  subsequent  compensation  curves  of  the  spine 
below.  Orthopedists  seem  to  have  forgotten 
that  the  cervical  vertebras  are  part  of  the  spinal 
column ;  any  lateral  bending  of  any  part  of  the 
column  produces  twisting  or  rotation,  with  the 
production  of  reverse  or  secondary  curves  later, 
in  the  effort  at  compensation.  George  Sand  and 
all  the  advocates  of  vertical  handwriting  have 
persistently  demanded  Ecriture  droite,  sur 
papier  droit,  corps  droit — vertical  handwriting, 

150 


Fig.  1 — The  hand  in  the  writinff  posture  as  usually  ordered  but  not 
practiced,  because  to  the  writer  the  writing-field  is  hidden  by  the 
thumb,  finger,  and  holder.  View  of  an  actual  hand  with  the  writer's 
head  displaced. 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


on  vertical  paper,  the  body  also  vertical. 
Knowing  what  was  and  is  intended  by  the 
words,  not  what  literally  is  said,  we  may  add 
that  even  this  intended  advice  is  impossible  of 
execution.  No  righthanded  person  ever  writes 
so,  or  could  write  so,  i.e.,  if  the  paper  (as  sup- 
posed) is  horizontal,  placed  squarely  (not 
skewed)  before  the  median  line  of  the  body,  and 
the  penholder  held  as  instructed  in  the  "correct 
position,"  i.e.,  with  the  upper  end  pointing 
toward  the  shoulder.  No  one  ever  wrote  a  line 
in  this  position,  and  simply  because  he  could 
not  see  the  letters  he  was  making.  And  to 
write  we  must  see  the  letters  which  are  being 
formed.    (See  Fig.  1.) 

Details  as  to  the  Nine  Factors  of  Malposture 
in  Writing. — 

1.  The  position  of  the  head  may  be : 

a.  Perfectly  erect,  its  long  or  vertical  axis 
corresponding  with  the  vertebral  axis  when  the 
body  is  erect  and  accurately  and  squarely  in 
front  of  the  desk. 

h.  Canted  or  tilted  to  one  side,  to  the  left  in 
the  righthanded,  and  in  various  degrees. 

c.  Twisted  on  the  vertical  axis  of  the  head 
and  neck,  to  the  right  in  writing,  by  the  right- 
handed. 

151 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

d.  Positions  a  and  c,  combined  or  mixed. 

e.  Positions  h  and  c,  combined  or  mixed. 
2.  Tlie  posture  of  the  body  may  be : 

/.  Erect,  the  lateral  axis  parallel  with  the 
front  line  of  the  desk. 

g.  Bent  to  the  left  (in  the  righthanded)  in 
varying  degrees,  the  vertebral  column  being 
either  straight  or  curved. 

h.  The  spinal  column  twisted  in  varying 
degrees. 

i.  The  right  side  of  the  body  turned  toward 
the  desk  or  approximated  to  it  more  or  less. 

j.  Varying  combinations  of  the  positions  g,  h, 
and  i. 

In  practical  and  unconscious  writing  the 
positions  of  the  head  and  postures  of  the  body 
above  enumerated  under  1  and  2  may  be  and 
usually  are  mixed  and  interdependent,  thus 
resulting  in  many  modifications  and  variations. 

3  and  4.  The  location  and  angling  of  the 
paper  upon  the  desk  may  be : 

k.  In  front  of  the  face  and  squarely  placed, 
i.e.,  its  lower  border  parallel  with  the  front  of 
the  desk. 

I.  Askew,  at  varying  angles  to  the  left,  but 
usually  at  an  angle  of  about  35°  with  the  desk 
front. 

152 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


m.  With  the  lefthand  border  parallel  with  the 
desk  front. 

n.  Opposite  the  right  shoulder  in  head  and 
body  postures  a  and  /,  the  lower  border  parallel 
with  the  desk  front. 

With  the  ordinary  straight  penholder  and  pen 
held  as  universally  ordered,  and  the  head  and 
body  in  postures  a  and  /,  no  ordinary  human 
being  can  write,  because  the  index  finger  and 
the  pen  necessarily  come  between  the  right  eye 
and  the  pen-point.  (Fig.  1.)  Therefore,  every 
writer  immediately  disobeys  the  teacher  and 
varies  one  or  all  of  the  positions,  postures,  etc., 
so  that  the  dominant  eye  has  an  unobstructed 
view  of  the  writing-field.  (Fig.  2.)  The  most 
extreme  position  of  the  body  and  head  I  have 
ever  seen  was  in  a  patient  who  had  an  enormous 
astigmatism,  and  who  was  compelled  to  bring 
the  eyes  almost  to  a  level  of  the  table,  with 
extreme  rotation  of  the  head  in  order  to  bring 
the  astigmatic  axes  into  parallelism  with  the 
lines  of  the  writing  being  executed.  Position 
n  of  the  paper  is  the  only  one  that  permits  of 
the  perfectly  erect  or  hygienic  postures  of  the 
head  and  body  designated  as  a  and  /,  because 
only  under  such  conditions  can  the  dominant 

153 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

eye  have  a  clear  view  of  the  writing  field. 
5.  But  the  difficulty  of  writing  in  these  post- 
ures and  conditions  is  greatly  increased  by 
the  flat  desk,  and  is  almost  done  away  with  by 
an  inclination  of  the  desk  leaf  or  writing  board 
at  an  angle  of  30°.  The  ink  will  still  flow  from 
the  pen  with  the  leaf  at  this  angle,  the  position 
of  the  head  and  body  made  most  comfortable 
and  hygienic,  and  the  unconscious  tendency  to 
bend  the  head  and  body  is  neutralized.  The 
copyists  and  monks  of  medieval  and  Latin  times 
learned  this,  as  is  illustrated  by  the  annexed 
cut.  (Fig.  3.)  An  added  and  highly  important 
consideration  is  that  by  the  30°  or  40°  sloped 
desk  leaf,  the  eyes  are  enabled  to  look  off  at  the 
book  or  writing  at  nearly  a  horizontal  line, 
instead  of  down  upon  it  with  the  eyes  nearly 
vertically  over  the  letters.  The  traction  on  the 
inferior  recti  muscles  of  the  eyes  with  the  re- 
sultant unnatural  position  of  the  eyes,  is  a 
prolific  source  of  eyestrain.  It  also  compresses 
the  chest,  humps  the  back,  interferes  with  the 
circulation  of  the  neck,  the  supply  of  blood  to 
the  brain,  and  the  flow  of  air  in  and  out  of  the 
lungs  in  breathing.  The  inclination  of  the  desk 
may  be  more  pitched  in  reading  than  in  writing. 

154 


Fig.  2 — The  common  but  in  the  picture  somewhat  exaggerated  writ- 
ing malposture  method  of  holding  the  pen,  skewing  the  paper,  bend- 
ing of  body,  torsion  of  head,  etc.,  in  order  to  gain  a  clearer  view  of 
the  writing-field. 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


0.  The  child's  feet  must  rest  lightly  and  natu- 
rally upon  the  floor,  with  the  knees  bent  at  about 
a  right  angle,  the  body  at  the  proper  distance 
from  the  edge  of  the  desk.     This  can  be  effected 


Fig.  3 — ^The  medieval  copyists  wrote  with  the  paper 
pitched  at  a  sharp  angle. 

only  by  means  of  a  seat  that  may  be  raised  or 
depressed,  and  not  attached  to  the  floor. 

6.  The  organizers,  teachers,  trustees,  furni- 
ture makers,  and  parents  have  too  often  failed 
to  notice  that  children  differ  in  height  from 

155 


RIGHTHx\NDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

adults,  differ  from  each  other,  and  that  they 
have  a  habit  of  growing.  Even  the  most  pro- 
gressive in  ver}^  recent  years  have  not  come  to 
a  thorough-going  knowledge  of  these  simple 
facts,  and  have  not  made  the  school  desks  and 
seats  to  conform  accurately  to  them.  What  is 
now  needed  is  mechanical  constructions  which 
will  meet  the  differences  of  each  child  in  an 
easy  and  perfect  manner. 

p.  The  leaf  of  the  desk,  in  addition  to  being- 
inclined  at  an  angle  of  about  30°,  must  be  of 
a  height  which  brings  the  printed  book  and 
writing  paper  at  a  distance  of  about  14  inches 
from  the  eyes. 

q.  The  pedagogs  have  also  usually  failed  to 
notice  that  in  reading  a  book  it  may  be  placed 
opposite  the  median  line  of  the  body  or  face  (in 
erect  position),  but  that  in  writing  the  paper 
should  not  be  thus  placed.  Hence  the  frequent 
permission  in  writing  to  turn  the  right  side  of 
the  body  toward  the  desk.  When  the  paper  is 
placed  opposite  the  right  shoulder  upon  a 
sharply-inclined  desk  leaf  of  the  proper  height, 
the  eyes  can  see  the  writing-field  without  un- 
natural positions  of  the  body  and  head. 

7.  Everyone   has    probably   wondered   why, 

15G 


Fig.  4 — The  usual  writing  posture.  The  body  and  head  are  bent 
to  the  left,  the  head  in  addition  rotated  so  that  the  chin  is  to  the 
right;  there  is  a  cervical  curve  with  the  convexity  to  the  right;  the 
right  side  of  the  body  is  turned  toward  the  desk;  the  paper  is  skewed 
to  the  left;  the  predominant  90°  axes  of  astigmatism,  d  d,  are  at 
approximate  right  angles  to  the  vertical  lines  of  the  paper,  a  a ;  to 
lessen  the  strain  upon  the  body,  neck  and  eyes,  the  approximate  par- 
allelism of  the  lines  c  6,  with  the  lines  a  a,  of  the  skewed  paper  is 
varied,  causing  the  obliquity  of  the  written  letters  to  the  right,  or 
the  slanted  style  of  handwriting. 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


when  the  school  and  writing  teacher  are  ignored 
or  forgotten,  the  pen  and  holder  are  either 
slanted  differently;  held  between  the  first  and 
second  fingers;  not  seldom  angled  parallel 
with  the  lateral  lines  of  the  paper,  even  nearly 
vertical,  or  toward  the  upright  lines  of  the 
paper ;  drawn  inward  and  toward  the  chest,  the 
eyes  above  and  looking  down  vertically  upon 
the  sheet;  and  the  head  in  various  other  un- 
natural and  cramping  positions.  (Fig.  4.) 
Such  anomalies  are  too  frequent  to  be  called 
anomalies,  and  are  simply  the  unconscious 
morbid  methods  whereby  the  dominant  eye  gets 
a  free  view  of  the  writing-field.  The  types  of 
this  unhygienic  pen-holding  are  too  numerous 
and  anomalous  to  be  classified. 

Artists,  by  means  of  long-handled  brushes, 
etc.,  are  able  to  gain  a  clear  view  of  large  spaces 
about  the  point  of  the  brush,  pencil,  etc.,  by 
grasping  the  handle  several  inches  from  the 
point.  They  are  thus  under  no  necessity  of 
inclining  the  head  and  body.  Also  their  can- 
vases, easels,  etc.,  are  either  vertical  or  nearly 
so,  and  this  does  away  with  the  visual  difficulty 
encountered  when  the  surface  is  horizontal  or 
only  slightly  inclined. 

157 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANUEDNESS 

8.  Some  authors  describe  postures  in  which 
the  body  is  leaned  to  the  right,  but  they  are  not 
practiced  because  the  writing-field  is  thus  hid- 


FiG.  5 — A  malposture  pictured  and  described  by  authors, 
but  never  practiced  by  one  in  writing,  because  the  writing- 
field  would  not  be  visible.  The  artist  unconsciously  shows 
the  cervical  curve  with  convexity  to  the  right,  almost  always 
present  in  dextral  writers. 

den  to  a  greater  degree.  (Figs.  5,  6,  7,  8,  9, 10.) 
In  all  the  multitude  of  improper  postures, 
positions,  pen-holdings,  etc.,  the  teachers  of 
writing,  hygiene,  and  physiology  have  failed  to 
notice  that  by  some  device  nature  will  bring  it 

158 


Fig.  6 — Some  liysienists  describe  a  form  of  iiialposture  consisting:  in 
skewing  the  paper  to  the  right  and  bending  the  body  and  head  to 
the  right ;  it  is  never  practiced  because  the  writing-field  is  still  more 
hidden  than  in  the  posture  of  Fig.  3  ordered  as  "  correct." 


Fig.  7 — View  of  the  writing-field  as  seen  by  the  writer  with  skewed 
paper,  and  with  tlie  body  and  head  turned  to  the  left. 


YiG.  8 — To  gain  a  better  view  of  the  writing-field  the  pupil  instead 
of  leaning  to  the  left,  sometimes  bends  forward  until  the  eyes  are 
directly  above  or  es-en  in  advance,  of  the  writing,  lateral  curvature 
and  rotation  of  the  spine  being  thus  avoided. 


Fig.  9 — The  writing-field  brought  into  clear  view  by  holding 
the  penholder  between  the  first  and  second  finger,  thus  lessen- 
ing the  need  of  bending  the  body  or  head  to  the  left  The 
view  is  as  tne  writer  sees  it,  his  head  being  out  of  the  field 
in  order  to  photograph  the  hand. 


Fig.  10 — To  secure  a  better  view  of  the  writing-field  the  hand  is 
held  in  a  straining  and  unnatural  position,  the  holder  directed  90°  to 
the  right  of  the  right  shoulder. 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


about  that  the  90°  axes  of  the  eyes  and  astig- 
matism will  be  forced  into  parallelism  with  the 
vertical  or  slanted  lines  of  the  long  letters  being 
written.  Hence  the  multiplicity  of  morbid 
postures  begotten  by  the  failure  to  place  the 
paper  properly  before  the  right  shoulder  and 
with  the  head  and  body  erect,  with  the  inclined 
desk  leaf,  and  the  penholder  properly  seized. 

9.  Only  when  these  conditions  last  named  are 
assured  has  the  dominant  eye  an  unobstructed 
view  of  the  writing-field,  at  the  proper  distances, 
etc.  To  secure  this  clear  view  of  the  writing- 
field  with  the  paper  placed  according  to  uni- 
versal instruction,  the  head  and  body  are  forced 
into  unnatural  positions.  The  unnaturalness 
and  weariness  of  these  morbid  postures  are 
lessened  a  little  by  the  slanting  of  the  letters  to 
the  right,  and  the  tendency  of  the  line  of  writing 
to  slant  upward.  This  any  one  can  demon- 
strate by  a  few  thoughtful  tests  or  observations. 
And  this  is  the  source  of  slanted  handwriting. 
(Fig.  4.)  It  is  in  fact  a  method  of  avoiding  still 
more  extreme  torsion  of  the  head  or  neck — a 
greater  morbid  slant  of  the  patient  by  a  slant 
of  the  writing, 

I  cannot  find  that  anyone  who  has  written  of 

159 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

handwriting  or  of  school  hygiene,  or  who  has 
constructed  or  advised  as  to  the  making  of 
school  desks  and  seats,  has  ever  dreamed  of 
the  patent  and  easily  recognized  fact  that  every 
one  of  the  nine  factors  are  verities,  and  that 
they  are  bound  together  into  a  co-ordinate  unity. 
None  of  them  can  be  much  changed  without 
changing  all  of  the  others,  and  unconsciously 
every  pupil  and  writer  has  solved  the  problem 
of  carrying  out  the  writing  act  by  a  special  and 
personal  adaptation  and  modification  of  each 
of  the  factors  mentioned.  The  one  all-domi- 
nating necessity  which  everyone  discussing  the 
subject  seems  to  have  overlooked,  is  that  the 
wi'iting-field  (the  space  about  the  pen-point) 
shall  be  seen,  seen  with  both  eyes,  but  especially 
seen  with  the  right  eye.  I  speak  of  righthanded 
and  righteyed  persons.  All  is  reversed  as  to 
the  lefthanded  and  lefteyed.  The  essence  of 
the  matter  is  the  necessity  of  binocularity  and 
especially  the  existence  of  a  righteyedness,  a 
hitherto  unrecognized  thing,  and  the  most  inti- 
mate co-ordination  of  the  right  eye  and  right 
hand  in  the  most  mental  and  intellectual  of  all 
acts,  except  speech — that  is,  writing.  The  posi- 
tions usually  taught  by  school  teachers,  writing 

160 


Fig.  11 — The  normal  or  hygienic  posture  of  the  lj(jily  and  head  with 
the  paper  placed  vertically  and  opposite  the  right  shoulder.  The  arm 
and  head  thus  have  free  motion.  There  is  some  constraint,  due  to 
the  flat  desk,  a  too  great  distance  of  the  writing,  and  the  fact  that 
the  visual  axes,  falling  at  an  angle  of  about  4.5°,  demand  a  bending 
of  the  head  forwards,  or  too  great  traction  on  the  depressor  muscles 
of  the  eyes. 


Fig.  12 — With  the  desk-leaf  pitdied  at  an  angle  of  30°  or  40°,  the 
posture  is  hygienically  perfect,  anil  the  faults  of  Fig.  6  are  entirely 
avoided. 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


teachers,  and  copy-books  are  next  to  impossible, 
certainly  not  practised  by  the  child  or  man 
when  writing  much  or  unconsciously.  Then 
nature  modifies  all  the  nine  factors  mentioned, 
solely  and  simply  in  order  that  the  hand,  fingers, 
and  pen  shall  not  come  between  the  right  eye 
and  the  writing-field.  The  pathology  of  school 
life  in  a  multitude  of  symptoms  and  diseases 
consists  for  the  greater  part  in  the  unhygienic 
attempts  to  see  the  writing-field  with  the  domi- 
nant eye.  And  the  two  great  blunders  of  all 
the  teachers  and  desk-makers  are  that  the  pen- 
holders and  pens  are  not  shaped  so  that  the 
writing  space  or  field  about  the  pen-point  can 
be  seen  with  both  eyes  when  the  body  and  head 
are  erect ;  or  that  the  desk  is  not  inclined  at  an 
angle  of  about  30°,  and  the  writing  paper  is  not 
placed  squarely  and  opposite  the  right  shoulder, 
with  the  body  and  head  erect  and  squarely 
postured  before  the  desk.  With  the  paper  so 
placed  the  desk  top  so  inclined,  the  body  and 
head  thus  erect,  the  right  eye  sees  the  paper  at 
12  inches  or  14  inches,  and  the  writing  is  ver- 
tical.   (Fig.  11,  12.) 

Probably  as  many  as  200  distinct  styles  of 
school  desks  and  chairs  have  been  proposed, 

11  161 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

tried,  and  rejected  or  are  in  use.  The  reader 
may  find  some  of  these  described  in  works  on 
school  hygiene,  such  as  that  of  Kotelmann, 
Meyer,  Staffel,  Fahrner,  Eettig,  Hermann, 
Bendzula,  Schildback,  Schenk,  Hippauf,  Prau- 
sek,  Wallraff,  Barnard,  Priestly  Smith,  Stone,* 
Shaw,t  and  especially  Eisley.ii 

So  far  as  these  relate  to  reading  of  a  single 
book  the  results  reached  by  students  of  peda- 
gogy are  of  great  value^ — ^but  with  one  excep- 
tion: All  advise  an  inclination  of  only  10°  or 
15°.  It  should  be  at  least  30°,  and  with  easily 
made  devices  for  holding  the  book  should  be 
45°.  Even  with  the  30°  inclination  the  pupil 
will  often  hold  the  book  with  the  hand  at  a 
greater  inclination,  and  there  is  no  reason  why 
every  desk  should  not  be  inclined  at  least  30°. 
"When  two  books  are  used  at  one  time,  or  when 
the  pen  or  pencil  is  used  synchronously  with 
reading,  the  inclination  must  be  greater  than 
15°,  in  order  to  permit  hygienic  posture.  In 
the  writing  act  hygienic  posture  is  almost  im- 
possible with  less  than  a  30°  pitch.     This  fact, 


*  American  Physical  Education  Eeview,  June,   1900. 

t  Ibid.,  June,  1901. 

%  Norris  and  Oliver :  "  System  of  Disease  of  the  Eye,"  Vol.  ij. 

162 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


together  with  insufficient  space  at  the  right, 
largely  vitiates  all  previous  results,  decisions, 
and  mechanisms  as  regards  school-desks.  The 
simple  device  needed  is  one  which  will  permit  a 
varying  and  independent  pitch  of  the  two  ver- 
tical halves  of  the  desk  itself.  It  should  be 
possible  to  give  either  any  pitch  between  15° 
and  45°,  and  with  devices  so  that  the  book,  slate, 
paper  pad,  etc.,  will  not  fall,  and  may  be  held 
in  place  without  the  hand.  If  the  pencil  is  used, 
even  as  high  a  pitch  as  40°  or  45°  will  be  grate- 
ful to  the  body  and  eye.  If  ink  is  used,  the  pitch 
should  be  at  least  30°,  as  with  this  inclination 
the  ink  will  still  flow,  and  only  with  so  high  a 
pitch  is  there  possible  a  view  of  the  writing-field 
with  the  right  eye  and  at  14  inches  distance, 
when  the  paper  is  placed  opposite  the  right 
shoulder,  with  the  head  and  body  erect,  without 
elevation  of  the  right  shoulder;  this  insures 
free  motion  of  the  right  arm  and  hand  in 
unconstrained  and  normal  positions.  The 
copyists  of  the  middle  ages  found  this  to  be 
true,  and  our  school  teachers  of  former  genera- 
tions, who  were  their  direct  descendants,  for  a 
time  kept  up  this  wise  tradition.    The  desk  top 

163 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

should  be  made  in  two  independent  halves,  the 
upper  or  farther  edges  so  constructed  that 
either  may  be  raised,  thus  varying  the  pitch 
from  the  minimum  of  30°  to  a  maximum  of  45° 
and  thus  adapted  to  reading  or  writing  at  pleas- 
ure. Thus  made,  the  riglit-hand  leaf  would  be 
the  only  one  used  for  writing.  All  pupils 
should,  of  course,  have  desk  and  chair  so 
adapted  to  their  height  that  the  book  or  paper 
would  be  at  14  inches  from  the  eye  when  looking 
down  upon  it  with  a  visual  axis  at  an  angle  or 
inclination  not  greater  than  150°  or  155°.  The 
visual  axis  at  about  150°  should  approximately 
form  a  right  angle  with  the  inclination  of  the 
desk  leaf  at  about  30°.  (According  to  the 
oculist's  trial  frame,  and  as  figured  in  illustra- 
tion, the  desk  top  would  be  at  145°  and  the 
visual  axis  at  35°.) 

The  Relation  of  Occidental  and  Oriental 
Writing  Postures  and  MetJiods  to  Spinal  Curva- 
ture.— In  China  and  Japan  the  habits  and 
methods  of  writing  present  throughout  most 
noteworthy  contrasts  to  those  customary  with 
us.  The  particulars  may  be  briefly  epitomized 
as  follows : 

164 


Fig.  13 — Oriental  method  of  holding  the  writing 
brush,  giving  an  unobstructed  view  of  the  writing- 
field. 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


1.  The  writing  begins  at  tlie  upper  right- 
liand  corner  of  the  paper,  giving  an  evident 
advantage  in  seeing  the  writing  field  or  letters 
which  are  being  formed,  and  especially  with 
the  right  or  dominant  eye. 

2.  The  lines  of  writing  proceed  from  the  top 
to  the  bottom  of  the  page,  thus  again  securing 
increased  visibility  of  the  writing-field. 

3.  There  is  thus  no  need  and  no  practice  of 
skewing  the  paper  to  secure  unimpeded  vision 
of  the  writing-field.  The  writing  is  naturally 
vertical. 

4.  The  writing  brush  (corresponding  to  our 
pen  and  holder),  is  grasped  from  two  to  four 
inches  from  the  brush  tip  (corresponding  to 
our  pen) ;  it  is  held  usually  between  the  second 
and  third  fingers  (instead  of  between  the  thumb 
and  first  finger  as  with  us),  and  either  upright 
or  slanting  away  from  the  writing  space,  to  the 
right,  and  not,  as  our  children  are  instructed, 
with  the  holder  pointing  toward  the  right  shoul- 
der. (Fig.  13.)  Each  one  of  the  methods  of 
holding  the  brush  aids  decidedly,  and  collec- 
tively very  powerfully,  in  keeping  the  writing 
space  clearly  in  view  of  the  vision  of  both  eyes. 

165 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

It  seems  almost  as  if  all  these  methods  were 
consciously  designed  that  the  writing-field 
might  be  seen. 

5.  In  addition,  Japanese  and  Chinese  friends 
tell  me  it  is  a  habit  of  many  to  hold  the  paper 
with  the  left  hand,  in  the  air,  and  pitched  at 
an  angle  of  from  30°  to  50°.  I  did  not  know 
of  this  custom  until  months  after  I  had  written 
advising  a  pitch  of  the  leaf  of  the  writing  desk 
of  30°.  A  greater  pitch  than  this  would  some- 
times not  permit  the  ink  to  flow  freely  from  our 
steel  pens.  The  medieval  copyists  used  a  pitch 
of  50°  or  over,  and  our  modern  draughtsmen 
and  artists  often  do  the  same.  Modern  artists 
in  painting  and  sketching  secure  the  clear  view 
of  the  field  of  work  by  setting  their  canvas 
nearly  vertical  and  by  holding  the  brush  or 
pencil  from  three  to  ten  inches  from  the  point. 
There  are  more  modern  writers  than  we  suspect 
who  increase  the  extent  of  visibility  of  the 
writing-field  by  holding  the  pen  between  the 
first  and  second  fingers,  or  by  grasping  the 
holder  two  or  three  inches  from  the  pen-point, 
by  turning  the  hand  half  upward,  or  by  slanting 
the  penholder  to  the  right.  But  these  are  de- 
vices   forbidden    by    teachers     (and    writing 

1G6 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


books),  who  have  no  perception  of  the  simple 
reason  why  the  so-called  "incorrect"  habits 
and  postures  are  unconsciously  chosen. 

6.  Whether  we  should  imitate  the  Oriental 
methods  described  above,  either  in  part  or  not, 
is  at  present  not  my  concern.  Their  result  is 
our  one  great  desideratum — the  preservation 
of  the  erect  and  hygienic  posture  during  the 
writing  act.  There  is  little  or  no  bending  of 
the  head  to  the  left.  If  this  functional  right 
cervical  curve,  habitual  in  the  Occidental  pos- 
ture, is  the  cause  of  the  incipient  spinal  curves 
of  our  school  children,  it  follows  that  there  will 
be  far  less  than  27  percent  of  Japanese  and 
Chinese  children  showing  such  curves  between 
the  ages  of  seven  and  fourteen  years.  An  or- 
thopedic examination  of  the  backs  of  a  large 
number  of  the  children  of  Oriental  schools 
would  yield  interesting  and  critical  results.  A 
minor  query  would  be  as  to  the  proportion  of 
scoliotics  among  Occidental  children  blind  from 
infancy. 

That  the  approximation  to  the  upright  post- 
ure (not  its  absolute  practice),  lessens  scoliosis, 
is  apparently  shown  by  the  following  statistics 
of  examinations  of  school  children: 

167 


c 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


Slant  Vertical 

writers  writers 

percent  percent 

NuiTiberg 34:  15 

Ziiiich    32  12 

Munich    24  15 

Furth  65  31 

Wurzburg   28  8 

The  first  colunm  averages  30  percent,  tlie 
second  16.  But  if  the  slanted  style  is  account- 
able for  twice  as  many  scoliotics  as  the  vertical, 
the  vertical  is  still,  apparently,  responsible  for 
one-half  as  many  as  the  slant.  It  is,  therefore, 
evident  that  the  vertical  style  did  not  insure  the 
vertical  position  of  the  head  and  body,  or  that 
some  other  cause  is  at  work.  If  the  true  reason 
of  malposition  in  writing  had  been  understood, 
and  the  conception  of  its  cure  realized,  the  re- 
sults and  their  suggestions  would  have  differed 
and  been  of  greater  value.  The  above  great 
differences  found  in  different  cities  also  exhibit 
an  inexactitude  which  makes  no  one  doubt  the 
valuelessness  of  the  methods  employed. 

The  School  Desk. — There  is  probably  not  a 
pupil's  desk  in  the  world  constructed  upon  cor- 
rect physiologic  principles.  Many  approxi- 
mate, but  fail  in  one  or  more  important  par- 
ticulars.    This  is  because,  with  all  of  the  inter- 

168 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


est,  study,  and  invention  which  have  been  put 
into  the  work,  with  all  that  has  been  written 
concerning  the  vertical  and  slanted  handwrit- 
ing, there  has  been  no  understanding  of  the 
physiology  of  righthandedness  and  righteyed- 
ness,  no  comprehension  of  the  optic  problem 
which  controls  every  posture  and  act.  The 
wrong  to  the  child  began  with  the  beginnings 
of  pedagogy.  Prior  to  this  handwriting  was 
usually  vertical,  because  without  a  powerfully 
dominating  necessity  no  adults,  much  less  the 
shrewd  monks,  would  have  bent  themselves  to  the 
left  and  skewed  their  vellum,  tablet,  or  paper  at 
the  absurd  angle  now  common  with  all  writers. 
But  when  school  teaching  began  it  was,  of  course, 
in  the  houses  or  rooms  of  adults,  and  with  their 
tables,  benches,  forms  or  stools.  No  one  then 
dreamed  of  the  peculiar  child  nature,  not  even 
the  size  of  the  child 's  body.  Hence,  he  sat  upon 
a  bench  or  seat  too  low,  or  what  amounts  to 
the  same  thing,  at  a  table  too  high  for  the 
height  of  his  body,  and  at  about  the  level  of  his 
sternum,  neck,  or  chin.  When  compelled  to 
write  he  could  do  nothing  at  the  desk,  except  by 
placing  his  forearm,  and  even  his  elbow,  upon 
the  table.     Let  an  adult  try  to  write  sitting  at  a 

169 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

flat  table  the  height  of  his  neck  and  he  will 
realize  the  child's  predicament.  With  the  arm 
upon  the  table  there  can  be  no  writing  accom- 
plished unless  the  head  is  canted  to  the  left,  the 
body  also,  the  paper  placed  askew,  the  feet  or 
one  foot  thrust  out  to  lessen  the  strain  and 
wrenching  of  the  spine,  the  pen  held  at  a  re- 
lated abnormal  angle,  and  the  hand  gripping  the 
holder  in  a  distorted  way.  (Fig.  2.)  All  this, 
that  the  right  eye  may  have  an  unimpeded  view 
of  the  space  in  which  the  letters  are  being 
formed.  Think  of  the  millions  of  morbidly 
raised  right  shoulders,  the  millions  of  necks 
and  backs  thus  wrenched,  with  all  the  resultant 
disease,  and  during  the  last  400  years!  And 
still  going  on ! 

Most  school  desks  are  without  lateral  space 
to  the  right  in  which  the  paper  may  be  placed 
opposite  the  right  shoulder  when  the  body  and 
head  are  erect  and  squarely  placed  in  front  of 
the  desk,  and  not  as  now  in  front  of  the  face 
or  chest.  This  lack  of  lateral  space  to  the  right 
has  always  been  the  unrealized  need,  and  upon 
securing  it  the  complete  establishing  of  the 
vertical  style  of  handwriting  will  depend,  as 

also  the  rescue  of  the  child  from  the  bad  post- 
170 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


ures  and  ill-healtli  caused  by  the  diabolic  head- 
tilting,  right-shoulder-elevating,  eye-ruining, 
body-bending,  pelvis-cramping,  spine-twisting, 
scoliosis-provoking  postures,  which  have  come 
down  to  our  times.  It  will  be  useless  to  demand 
of  the  child  that  he  shall  write  vertically,  sit 
vertically,  place  the  paper  squarely  and  not 
askew,  and  opposite  the  median  line  of  the  body. 
No  human  being  can  write  in  that  way  unless 
the  penholder  is  held  with  the  tip  directed 
toward  the  northeast,  or  upper  right  corner  of 
the  paper  (Fig.  9),  or  even  toward  the  north, 
all  sure  to  produce  writer's  cramp,  or  other  evil 
results  in  a  short  time.*  In  former  times,  as 
we  know,  the  children  were  crowded  together 
side  by  side  so  that  it  was  impossible  to  place 


*  Some  time  after  these  words  were  in  type,  a  striking 
confirmation  was  found  in  an  article  published  without  any 
knowledge  of  my  work.     I  quote  the  paragraph : 

"One  thing,  however,  has  been  much  impressed  upon  me, 
and  that  is  that  those  who  are  normally  lefthanded  and  are 
taught  to  write  with  their  right  hand,  suffer  from  writer's 
cramp  much  more  readily  than  normally  righthanded  indi- 
viduals. It  would  seem  as  though  nature  were  taking  her 
revenge  for  an  interference  with  her  original  plan,  for  the 
man  is  right-brained  and  should  not  be  compelled  to  use  his 
right  hand  for  a  work  requiring  so  much  coordination  as  does 
writing."  ("Some  So-called  Eheumatisms,"  J.  J.  Walsh, 
Medical  News,  February  18,  1905.) 

171 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

the  paper  opposite  the  righthand  side  of  the 
body  and  keep  the  body  and  head  erect.  The 
high  desk  united  to  compel  the  arm  to  be  rested 
upon  the  desk,  the  right  side  to  be  turned 
toward  it,  the  left  side  away  from  it,  the  head 
and  body  bent  to  the  left  in  order  to  gain  a 
clear  view  of  the  writing  space  of  the  pen-point 
with  the  dominant  eye.  Even  the  flat  desk  or 
table  co-operated  to  produce  the  resultant  bad 
posture  and  the  slanted  chirography. 

In  all  lefthanded  writers  the  foregoing  fac- 
tors and  results  are  reversed,  and  the  writing 
is  back  handed,  or  slanted  to  the  left.    (Fig.  14.) 

There  has  also  been  much  error  in  the  state- 
ments made  as  to  the  history  of  slanted  hand- 
writing. The  superb  History  of  the  Art  of 
Writing,  by  Dr.  Henry  Smith  Williams,  gives 
an  illuminating  series  of  examples  which  show 
that  the  slanted  handwriting  appeared  much 
earlier  than  has  been  supposed.  Despite  the 
high-pitched  slope  of  the  desks  of  the  profes- 
sional and  more  learned  scribes,  and  also  not- 
withstanding the  dictation  of  the  original 
vertical  engraved,  etched,  or  painted  patterns, 
the  slanted  style  appears  throughout  the  Middle 
Ages,  as  the  necessary  result  of  the  writing 

172 


i  '% 


KA->f 


Fig.  14— All  malpostures  are  reversed  by  left-handed  writers,  and, 
this  particular  patient  gained  a  better  view,  in  his  habitual  writing, 
by  holding  the  penholder  as  pictured. 


r 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


posture  consequent  upon  the  flat  table,  etc. 
Even  in  A.  D.  93,  the  letters  of  a  Greek  MS. 
plainly  lean  to  the  right,  and  in  a  cursive  Latin 
imperial  rescript  of  the  Fifth  Century  the  slope 
is  15°.  In  a  grant  to  the  Church  of  Ravenna 
of  the  Seventh  Century,  the  right  oblique  slant 
is  10°  or  more,  and  even  in  Magna  Charta  all 
letters  lean  to  the  right  somewhat.  Examples 
of  similar  slanting  are  found  in  the  handwriting 
of  Michael  Angelo,  Macchiavelli,  Ariosto, 
Tasso,  Luther,  Shakespeare,  Bacon,  Lope  de 
Vega,  Milton,  Locke,  Leibnitz,  Johnson,  etc. 
Montaigne,  Spencer,  Galileo,  Corneille,  Addi- 
son, Pope,  Newton,  Voltaire  slanted  their  letters 
to  about  the  same  extent  as  is  now  customary. 
Dante,  Piers  Ploughman,  and  others,  wrote  the 
vertical  hand.  Goethe  leaned  his  letters  ex- 
tremely, Schiller  less  so,  while  Tennyson's  were 
nearly  vertical.  Thackeray's  were  absolutely 
upright.  Of  the  signers  of  the  American  Decla- 
ration, only  one  is  in  vertical  letters.  Long- 
fellow wrote  a  ''backhand,"  and  in  a  MS.  of 
the  Tenth  Century  the  letters  also  lean  to  the 
left,  as  do  MSS.  of  Henry  II  and  Richard  I.  In 
King  John's  Charter  the  letters  are  generally 
upright,  although  many  letters  slant  to  the  left, 

173 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

especially  lower  case  d,  and  capital  D.  Of 
course  the  best  writers  and  penmen  were  usually 
intelligent,  and  wrote  more  nearly  correctly,  i.e., 
verticallv,  while  the  writers  of  the  lower  and 
commercial  classes  illustrate  the  degeneracy 
which  quickly  overcame  the  cursive  style  of 
writing.    In  general,  the  older  and  more  im- 

jIou>&ui  A(mu  mt'OonactU-  G^me^acvu/tuc^,  —  emaS  uw/ruvo'  any  t/ctA 

Fig.  15 — The  older  the  style  of  writing,  the  more  perpendicular  or 
vertical  the  letters ;  the  later  and  more  cursive,  the  more  slanted  be- 
come the  letters,  even  in  the  same  document — e.  g.  The  Declaration 
of  Independence. 

portant  styles  of  headings,  those  in  capitals, 
etc.,  were  upright,  while  the  less  important  and 
the  body  of  the  writing  showed  the  inevitable 
leaning  that  came  with  crowding,  and  cursive 
writing.  An  instance  of  this  is  our  own  Decla- 
ration of  Independence,  a  few  lines  of  which 
next  to  each  other  I  reproduce.    (Fig.  15.) 

174 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


Malposture  Not  the  Cause  of  Myopia. — In 
almost  all  the  discussion  as  to  school-desks, 
especially  that  originating  in  Europe,  there  is 
much  said  about  the  influence  of  malposture  in 
producing  myopia,  and  it  is  largely  twaddle. 
The  tremendous  gathering  of  statistics  and  the 
thoughtless  ascription  of  the  truly  tragic  in- 
crease of  myopia  to  malposture  in  study  and 
writing  are  essentially  wide  of  the  mark.  Some 
accidental,  incidental,  and  subordinate  influence 
is,  indeed,  to  be  ascribed  to  the  malposture 
criticised.  Kotelmann's  pages  concerning 
myopia  are,  for  instance,  wholly  misleading, 
and  utterly  ignore  the  real  cause — which  is 
the  noncorrection  of  ametropia,  and  espe- 
cially of  astigTQatism.  In  Germany,  the 
motherland  of  myopia,  there  is  no  scientific  cor- 
rection of  ametropia.  The  very  simplest  and 
most  fundamental  conditions  of  accuracy  are 
wilfully  or  ignorantly  unnoticed,  and  the  ocular, 
nervous,  and  nutritional  systems  are  hopelessly 
ruined  and  by  wholesale.  With  one  splendid 
exception  our  American  students  of  the  sub- 
ject have  usually  adopted  the  European 
blunder,   and  for   a  hundred  years   we   shall 

doubtless  have  the  empty  echoings  of  the  Euro- 

175 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

pean  nonsense  as  to  school  desks  and  myopia. 
In  an  article  (published  in  the  Klin.Monatshl. 
f.  Augenheilkunde,  July,  1904,  and  translated  in 
the  Annals  of  Ophthalmology,  January,  1905), 
Dr.  Liebreich  lends  his  authority  to  the  error 
that  myopia  is  caused  by  the  combined  action  of 
too  strong  convergence  and  too  great  an  accom- 
modation tension,  quoting  the  investigations  of 
Cohen,  Hersing,  Seggel,  and  others.  This  in- 
version of  cause  and  effect  does  not  prevent 
the  true  statement  that  'Hhrough  the  too  near 
approach  of  the  head  to  the  table,  the  normal 
curvature  of  the  spinal  column  is  increased  and 
by  simultaneous  rotation  of  the  head  and  body 
lateral  curvature  ensues."  Of  course,  all  such 
statements  and  explanations  miss  the  causes  of 
the  cause  which  are  the  action  of  astigmatism 
in  producing  myopia,  its  effect  in  compelling 
parallelism  of  the  axes  of  the  astigmatism 
and  of  the  written  lines  on  the  paper,  and  the 
more  fundamental  necessity  of  binocular  vision 
of  the  writing-field.  Scholder  also  says  that 
myopia  is  produced  by  getting  the  eyes  too  near 
the  paper,  because,  he  says,  the  more  the  head 
and  body  are  depressed  and  thus  myopia  is  pro- 
duced.   But  what  is  the  causa  causans  he  never 

176 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


asks.  Why  the  skewing  of  the  paper  I  In 
SehoJder's  table  of  the  increase  of  scoliotics  in 
the  grades  of  the  Lausanne  schools  he  notes  in 
an  added  column  the  increase  of  myopia,  as 
follows : 

Scoliotics  Myopes 

percent  percent 

First  grade 8.7  3. 

Second  grade   18.2  4.5 

Third  grade   19.2  5.2 

Fourth  gi-ade   27.2  6. 

Fifth  grade 28.3  8.5 

Sixth  grade   32.4  13.7 

Seventh  grade 31.  19.4 

If  the  author  had  scrutinizingly  asked  himself 
why  the  increase  of  scoliosis  is  suddenly 
stopped  and  decreased  at  about  14  years  of  age, 
and  why  the  rate  of  myopia  at  the  same  time  is 
suddenly  increased,  he  might  have  seen  a  sug- 
gestion of  the  cause  of  myopia.  In  Dr.  S.  D. 
Eisley's  magnificent  article  (Norris  and  Oliver: 
"System  of  Diseases  of  the  Eye,"  Vol.  II.) there 
is  a  clear  understanding  and  statement  of  the 
problem  of  myopia.  Myopia  is  not  due  to  the 
bad  desk  and  bad  posture,  but  to  the  bad  or 
absent  spectacles.  (I  differ  from  Dr.  Risley  in 
one  minor  points — the  astigmatism  is  not  only 
'Uhe  turnstile,"  but  the  path,  road,  and  continu- 

12  177 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

ance  of  the  road  itself,  which  leads  to  the  bog  of 
myopia.)  If  every  school  trustee,  pedagog, 
physician,  and  hygienist  would  read  every  word 
of  Dr.  Risley's  article  five  times  a  year,  one  of 
the  greatest  afflictions  of  mankind  might  be 
obviated.  Unfortunately,  it  is  buried  from  all 
but  ophthalmologists,  and  the  majority  of  these 
care  too  little  for  this  revolutionizing  truth. 

The  remarkable  success  of  all  the  European 
investigations  in  not  seeing  the  cause  of  myopia 
is  a  painful  illustration  of  the  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  scientific  and  medical  progress. 
Jaeger,  Ely,  and  Horstmann  were  approaching 
the  true  explanation,  in  their  work  leading  to 
the  measurements  of  the  anteroposterior  diam- 
eter of  hyperopic  and  myopic  eyes ;  by  Arlt  and 
Donders,  the  latter  emphasizing  the  role  of  pre- 
disposition— that  easy,  old  and  still  popular 
word  to  cover  ignorance  of  the  real  and  active 
pathogenic  factor.  Dobrowoesky  and  Erisman 
charged  the  accommodation  with  the  production 
of  myopia,  while  Forster  thought  it  was  due  to 
convergence.  Mauthner  ascribes  the  leading 
role  to  spasm  of  the  ciliary  muscles,  while  Still- 
ing threw  the  responsibility  upon  the  obliques 
and  the  shape  of  the  orbit — a  view  opposed  by 

178 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


I 


Schmidt-Rimpler  and  Seggel.  Hasner  and 
Weiss  contended  that  myopia  is  caused  by  a 
too  short  optic  nerve,  and  Schnabel  and  Herrn- 
heiser  by  a  lessened  resistance  of  the  sclerotic. 
It  remained  for  an  American  oculist  to  discover 
the  true  etiology  which  is  to-day  as  much 
ignored  by  European  oculists  and  school 
hygienists  as  if  it  had  been  made  this  morning 
instead  of  38  years  ago.  In  1867,  and  again  in 
1871,  Dr.  John  Green  of  St.  Louis  set  forth 
the  explanation,  and  a  few  years  later  Dr.  S.  D. 
Eisley  of  Philadelphia  demonstrated  it  by 
studies  of  school  children's  eyes  in  epoch- 
making  papers,  which,  within  the  next  genera- 
tion or  two  may  begin  to  make  the  epoch. 

The  Evils  of  Eyestrain. — In  all  of  the  fore- 
going there  have  been  considered  only  the  chil- 
dren, students,  and  writers  who  had  eyes  so 
near  normality  as  regards  ametropia  that  they 
had  no  severe  eyestrain  or  morbid  reflexes 
from  use  of  the  eyes  in  a  natural  way,  or  even  in 
the  unnatural  ways  begotten  by  morbid  post- 
ures ;  but  unnatural  posture  produces  unnatural 
ocular  function,  and  besides  this,  from  25  per- 
cent to  50  percent  of  all  civilized  persons  have 
eyestrain  or  hurtful  use  of  ametropic  eyes.  The 

179 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

amount  of  harm  done  the  eyes,  the  neurologic 
mechanism,  the  digestive  and  assimilative  sys- 
tems depends  upon  three  things :  the  kind  and 
the  degree  of  the  ametropia;  the  amount  of 
reading,  and  especially  of  writing,  done;  the 
susceptibility  of  the  patient,  the  general  vital- 
ity, intercurrent  diseases,  etc.  It  has  been 
found  that  from  50  percent  to  64  percent  of 
school  children  are  sickly  or  below  a  desirable 
norm  of  health.  I  do  not  think  it  is  an  exag- 
geration to  say  that  the  ills  of  50  percent  of 
these  hygienically  subnormal  children  and  stu- 
dents are  due  to  the  morbid  postures  compelled 
by  the  present  false  methods  of  writing  and 
reading.  Of  the  remaining  50  percent,  a  full 
half  are  directly  caused  by  the  eyestrain  of 
ametropic  eyes.  Headache,  "weak  eyes,"  mi- 
graine, anorexia,  dyspepsia,  and  many  types  of 
denutrition,  spinal  curvature,  insomnia,  ''nerv- 
ousness," many  cases  of  chorea  and  epilepsy, 
despondency  and  frequent  psychic  disorders, 
truancy,  immorality,  etc.,  almost  any  form  or 
kind  of  functional  disease — all  these,  and  the 
denutrition  that  fallows  the  ground  for  the  in- 
coming of  infectious  and  terminal  diseases — all 
of  these  are,  or  may  be,  the  clear  consequences 

180 


THE  WRITING  POSTURE 


of  eyestrain.  Only  proper  and  scientific  spec- 
tacles can  extinguish  these  evils.  But  without 
glasses  they  are  tremendously  increased  and 
intensified  by  the  morbidities  of  posture  en- 
gendered by  the  present  school-desks  and 
methods  of  writing  and  reading.  A  revolution 
is  demanded  by  an  enlightened  hygiene  in  school 
furniture  and  methods  of  writing  and  study. 
It  is  the  most  profound  and  crying  reform  of 
the  day,  a  matter  of  national  and  evolutional 
importance  almost  overtopping  all  others. 

Eead  the  clinical  biographies  of  the  great  suf- 
ferers from  eyestrain,  and  note  how  intolerable 
and  impossible  writing  becomes.  A  thousand 
quotations  from  their  biographies  and  letters 
might  be  made  showing  that  suffering  of  the 
most  varied  and  subtle  kinds  follows  directly 
upon  use  of  the  eyes  especially  in  writing,  and 
is  at  once  relieved  with  cessation  of  writing  and 
reading.  The  abnormal  and  morbid  postures 
caused  by  nonunderstanding  of  the  optic  prob- 
lems in  writing  add  enormously  to  the  pre-exist- 
ing and  attendant  eyestrain. 


181 


CHAPTER  VI. 


THE   PATHOLOGIC   EESULTS  OF  KIGHTEYEDNESS   AND 

LEFTEYEDNESS.* 


A  LITTLE  observation  and  a  few  tests  will 
show  that,  with  some  exceptions,  to  be  noted 
later,  the  righthanded  person  is  also  righteyed ; 
and  the  lefthanded  is  lefteyed.  That  is  to  say, 
there  is,  in  the  righthanded,  the  same  habitual 
and  unconscious  choice  of  the  image  of  the  right 
eye  for  the  more  expert  and  important  tasks, 
just  as  the  right  hand  is  chosen  for  those  func- 
tions in  skilled  work.  A  righthanded  hunter 
places  his  gun  against  the  right  shoulder  be- 
cause he  can  sight  it  with  the  right  better  than 
the  left  eye.  The  righthanded  person,  in  play- 
ing the  violin,  violoncello,  etc.,  is  forced  to  use 
the  left  hand  for  the  more  expert  task,  because 
he  thus  sees  the  fingers  and  the  neck  of  the 
instrument  without  foreshortening  and  better 
than  he  could  if  the  fingering  were  done  with 
the  right  hand.     All  actions,  in  fact,  are  de- 


*  American  Ophthalmological  Society,  1904;  Ophthalmology, 
October,  1904;   "Biographic  Clinics,"  Vol.  iii. 

182 


RIGHTEYEDNESS  AND  LEFTEYEDNESS 

termined  by  the  fundamental  necessity  that 
accurate  vision  shall  precede  all  action,  and 
vision  is  more  accurate  with  the  habitually 
exercised  eye,  just  as  manual  function  is  more 
expert  and  reliable  with  the  hand  most  exer- 
cised in  a  special  kind  of  work. 

A  little  closer  observation  soon  demonstrates 
that  not  only  is  the  righthanded  also  righteyed, 
but  that  he  is  usually  rightfooted,  and  right- 
eared.  This  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  a  per- 
son is  either  dextroexpert,  generally,  as  to  ear, 
eye,  hand,  and  foot,  or  else  he  is  sinistroexpert. 
There  must  manifestly  be  a  unity  in  the  co-ordi- 
nations of  all  acts,  and  such  co-ordinations 
would  evidently  be  better  with  a  habitual  one- 
sided similarity  of  execution  running  through  all 
kinds  of  action,  so  that  there  would  be  no  inde- 
cision in  rapid  and  dangerous  acts.  The  unity 
and  the  resultant  promptness  and  accuracy  of 
all  motions  is  thus  enhanced  by  a  synchronous 
dextroexpertness  or  sinistroexpertness.  The 
mixed  type,  illustrated  by  the  so-called  ambi- 
dextrous, would  place  the  organism  at  a 
wretched  disadvantage  in  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence, and  in  the  social  struggle  of  the  highest 
types  of  civilized  life. 

183 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

The  underlying  and  long  forerunning  cause, 
however,  of  the  co-ordination  of  dextral  acts,  or 
of  sinistral  ones,  lies  in  the  necessity  of  the 
localization  of  the  organ  of  speech  in  one  or  in 
the  other  side  of  the  cerebrum.  As  it  is  a 
single  and  not  a  dual  function,  its  organ  can  be 
only  in  one  place.  Pathology  has  proved  what 
physiology  pointed  out,  that  in  the  righthanded 
the  speech-center  is  in  the  left  side  of  the  brain, 
and  in  the  lefthanded  it  is  in  the  right  side. 
Moreover,  the  intellectual  act  of  writing  de- 
velops the  speech-center  on  the  side  opposite  to 
the  writing  hand.  The  history  of  cases  with 
tuniors  and  paralyses  has  settled  this  question 
beyond  controversy. 

The  speech-center  may  be  looked  on  as  the 
organ  through  which  intellectual  judgment  and 
decision  issues  in  determination  and  act.  The 
spoken  and  written  word  is  the  most  intimate 
act  of  the  mind,  its  irrevocable  and  immediate 
exponent.  Prior  to  all  judgment  and  decision, 
vision  must  give  the  data.  Intellect  is,  in  fact, 
the  product  of  vision,  and  all  mental  symbols, 
the  letters  of  the  alphabet  themselves,  are  but 
modified  visual  images.  The  thing  seen  is  thus 
worked  into  judgment,  and  by  the  third  com- 

184 


RIGHTEYEDNESS  AND  LEFTEYEDNESS 

ponent  of  human  action,  motion,  is  wrought 
into  completed  function.  ^Vision,  judgment, 
act,  are  thus  the  unexceptional  conditions  of 
human  activity  and  validity.  It  is  at  once  plain 
that  if  the  centers  which  intermediate  these 
three  functions  are  on  one  side  of  the  brain,  in 
contiguity,  and  closely  united  by  many  inter- 
central  fibers,  the  resultant  act  will  be  more 
accurate  and  rapid  than  if  one  or  two  of  the 
centers  are  in  the  opposite  side  of  the  brain. 
The  commissural  fibers  between  the  two  cere- 
bral hemispheres  would  be  fewer  and  longer, 
and  the  co-ordination  less  clear,  sharp  and  cer- 
tain. This  is  the  neurologic  basis  for  a  common 
dextrality  or  a  common  sinistrality  of  function 
in  one  individual,  and  it  completely  demolishes 
the  foolish  contention  of  those  who  would  vainly 
educate  the  six  percent  of  lefthanded  children  to 
be  ambidextrous.  There  never  was  an  ambi- 
dextrous person,  but  there  has  been  produced 
much  misery  by  the  foolish  attempt  to  create 
ambidexterity^ 

If  by  ocular  disease,  ametropia,  accident,  etc., 
the  righthanded  are  compelled  to  be  lefteyed, 
the  pathologic  results  which  may  flow  from  this 
interference,  or  reversal,  of  the  natural  order, 

185 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


become  of  exceptional  interest  to  the  ophthal- 
mologist. That  these  pathologic  results  exist  I 
have  no  doubt,  and  have  repeatedly  demon- 
strated in  the  persons  of  actual  patients.  I  sus- 
pect that  they  exist  in  at  least  ten  percent  of  all 
patients,  and  no  case  whatever  can  be  treated 
whoUj^  irrespective  of  the  fact  of  righteyed  or 
lefteyed  function. 

For  purposes  of  naming  and  clarifying  the 
ideas  to  be  presented,  let  us  call  the  right  eye  of 
righthanded  persons,  and  the  left  eye  of  left- 
handed  persons,  the  dominant  eye.  The  caution 
must  be  emphasized  that  the  hand  which  does 
the  writing  unconsciously  or  preferentially 
dictates  the  location  of  the  speech-center,  and 
the  true  condition  of  righthandedness  or  left- 
handedness. 

It  hardly  needs  the  saying  that  the  accidents 
of  ocular  diseases,  keratitis,  fundus  lesions, 
cataract,  high  ametropia,  heterophoria,  ambly- 
opia, etc.,  may  put  out  of  function,  or  threaten 
to  do  so,  the  primary — that  is,  the  naturally, 
logically  and  neurologically — dominant  eye,  and 
thus  the  eye  of  the  other  side  must  be  used  as 
a  makeshift  and  educated  to  become  the  sec- 
ondarily dominant  one.     The  older  the  age  at 

186 


RIGHTEYEDNESS  AND  LEFTEYEDNESS 

which  this  occurs  the  greater  the  difficulty,  the 
more  of  a  tragedy  will  it  be  to  the  patient. 
There  arise  a  hundred  problems.  I  shall  here 
allude,  and  most  briefly,  to  but  a  few  of  these: 

1.  In  all  operative  procedures  there  should 
be  an  exceptional  striving  to  save  the  dominant 
eye.  I  do  not  believe  in  operations  for  this 
purpose,  but  if  only  one  eye  can  be  straightened 
and  made  functional  in  strabismus,  by  all  odds 
let  it  be  the  dominant  one.  The  strabismus  of 
a  naturally  dominant  eye  will  be  more  easily 
cured  than  that  of  the  nondominant  one.  In 
double  convergent  squint  the  dominant  eye 
should  be  the  one  first  chosen  to  save.  In 
certain  cases  of  cataract  extraction  a  similar 
rule  should  be  followed. 

2.  In  inflammatory  diseases  there  should  be 
the  same  solicitude,  when  choice,  as  frequently, 
is  possible,  to  preserve  the  best  function  in  the 
dominant  eye. 

3.  The  supreme  value  of  the  dominant  eye 
makes  it  highly  important  that  ametropia  shall 
be  corrected  at  the  earliest  day  and  year  pos- 
sible. Every  month  that  amblyopia,  hetero- 
phoria,  or  strabismus  increases  in  that  eye, 
makes  the  life  history  and  struggle  of  that  child 

187 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

a  diiferent  and  a  more  difficult  one.  Right- 
handedness,  or  its  opi^osite,  is  pronounced  in 
children  of  less  than  a  year,  and  the  location 
of  the  speech-center  is  being  fixed  rapidly,  and 
often  unchangeably,  at  two  and  three  years  of 
age. 

4.  If  saving  of  the  naturally  dominant  eye  is 
impossible  in  the  young  child,  and  its  fellow 
must  be  secondarily  educated  into  dominancy, 
it  becomes  a  question  if  the  child  should  not 
also  be  taught  to  write,  eat,  etc.,  with  the  cor- 
responding hand. 

5.  In  the  adult  the  dominant  eye  I  have  found 
will  preserve  its  dominancy  despite  a  consider- 
ably higher  degree  of  amblyopia,  ametropia, 
etc.,  than  that  of  its  fellow.  But  it  is  evident 
that  there  must  be  a  limit.  I  doubt  if  the  natu- 
rally dominant  eye  would  retain  its  dominancy 
if  it  had,  say,  an  acuteness  of  only  20/50  while 
the  vision  of  the  other  was  normal.  This  fact 
arouses  a  number  of  queries  in  the  mind  of  the 
refractionist.  One  of  these  would  refer  to  the 
inadvisability  of  giving  the  nondominant  eye  a 
greatly  superior  acuteness  of  vision  by  means 
of  glasses.  In  an  adult  such  a  sudden  change, 
even  reversal,  in  the  habits  of  part  of  a  lifetime 

188 


RIGHTEYEDNESS  AND  LEFTEYEDNESS 

might  be  brought  about  that  the  spectacles 
would  not  be  tolerated,  and  failures  of  varied 
kinds  ensue.  The  patient  would  then  have  a 
life  handicap  that  would  greatly  lessen  his  per- 
sonal validity  and  happiness. 

6.  An  axis  of  astigmatism  in  the  dominant 
eye  from  10°  to  20°  to  either  side  of  90°  or  180°, 
while  the  axis  in  the  fellow  eye  remains  normal 
or  unsymmetric,  produces  head-tilting;  sym- 
metric axes  produce  no  head-tilting.  In  the 
few  months  after  I  discovered  this  law  I  found 
in  the  ordinary  run  of  office  practice  over  30 
cases  of  head-tilting.  The  stupid  error  I  had 
made  all  my  life  was  to  allow  these  patients  to 
cant  the  head  during  the  refraction  testing.  In 
this  way  I  had  failed  to  find  how  large  is  the 
number  of  righthanded  patients  who  have  axes 
of  astigmatism  of  the  right  eye  from  10°  to  20° 
to  one  side  of  90°  or  180°.  And  never  before 
this  had  I  thought  of  the  necessity  of  inquiring 
as  to  righthandedness  in  patients  having  these 
slightly  unsymmetric  axes  of  astigmatism.  It 
is  evident  that  an  axis  in  the  dominant  eye  only 
5°  to  one  side  of  90°  or  180°  would  hardly 
produce  a  noticeable  tilt  of  the  head,  or  might 
possibly  be  compensated  for  by  the  rotation  of 

189 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

the  eyeball  itself.  It  is  possible  that  some  types 
of  heterophoria,  and  especially  cyclophoria, 
may  be  explained  as  arising  from  this  compen- 
sation of  the  ocular  structures  instead  of  pro- 
ducing the  tilt  or  cant  of  the  head.  It  also 
seems  possible  that  this  compensatory  twist  of 
the  eyeball  in  the  orbit  may  possibly  cause  a 
compensatory  twist  of  the  optic  nerve,  and 
perhaps  certain  other  diseases  of  the  papilla 
and  retina.  After  prescription  of  proper  cor- 
recting glasses  it  would  be  natural  to  find  before 
long  a  secondary  change  of  axis  resulting  from 
the  rectification  of  the  abnormal  head-tilt,  or 
ocular  twist.  Such  patients  must  be  kept  under 
continuous  and  repeated  observation. 

If  the  axis  of  astigmatism  of  the  dominant 
eye  is  about  75°  or  165°,  it  is  evident  that,  if  the 
nondominant  eye  is  unsymmetric,  the  head  must 
be  tilted  to  the  right  in  order  to  bring  the  false 
axis  into  line  with  the  vertical  lines  of  print, 
trees,  houses,  wall  paper,  doors,  etc. 

If  the  axis  of  astigmatism  of  the  dominant 
eye  is  about  105°  or  15,°  compensatory  tilt  of 
the  head  must  be  to  the  left.  Greater  variations 
of  the  axis  than  20°  would  hardly  be  compen- 
sated  for   by   head-tilting,    but    would    either 

190 


RIGHTEYEDNESS  AND  LEFTEYEDNESS 

produce  amblyopia,  a  transfer  of  dominancy  to 
the  other  eye,  or  else  some  other  pathologic 
consequence  equally  harmful  to  action  and  life. 
The  axis  of  the  largest  number  of  head-tilters 
is  75°  in  the  right  eye,  and  thus  the  majority 
tilt  the  head  to  the  right. 

7.  Among  the  30  or  more  head-tilters  I  have 
found,  in  the  few  months  mentioned,  about  a 
dozen  with  resultant  spinal  curvature  or  scolio- 
sis. The  fact  was  usually  unsuspected  by  the 
patient,  the  parent,  and  the  attending  general 
physician.  I  sometimes  had  difficulty  in  getting 
consent  that  an  expert  orthopedic  surgeon 
should  verify  the  diagnosis.  A  report  of  these 
cases,  the  nature  of  the  compensatory  spinal 
curvature,  and  the  cure  by  glasses  alone,  or  by 
glasses  and  orthopedic  help,  will  be  published 
later.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  the  method 
of  production  of  scoliosis  resulting  from  an 
enforced  and  habitual  abnormal  position  of  the 
head  is  well  understood  by  orthopedic  surgeons. 
Habitual  carrying  forward,  for  instance,  of  the 
hearing  ear  in  case  of  unilateral  deafness  will 
result  in  scoliosis.  There  are  undoubtedly 
thousands  of  children  with  curved  spinal  col- 
umns in  the  United  States  whose  spinal  disease 

191 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

is  due  to  a  slightly  aberrant  axis  of  astigmatism. 

8.  An  ametropia  in  the  nondominant  eye 
which  tends  to  throw  it  out  of  function  is  much 
more  likely  to  result  in  malfunction,  nonfunc- 
tion, and  disease  of  that  eye  than  would  be  the 
case  in  the  dominant  eye.  Many  practical  sug- 
gestions and  rules  result  from  this  fact  both  in 
refraction  work  and  in  the  management  of 
inflammatory  diseases.  In  amblyopiatrics,  for 
instance,  it  is  perhaps  as  well  not  to  strive  to 
give  the  nondominant  eye  an  exceptional,  or 
even  an  equal,  acuteness  of  vision.  Nature  will 
not  respond  to  the  attempt  so  willingly  as  in  a 
similar  attempt  with  the  dominant  eye. 

9.  The  failure  to  diagnose  the  unsymmetric 
variation  of  axis  of  the  dominant  eye  will,  of 
course,  result  in  the  noncure  of  the  reflexes 
which  are  caused  by  eyestrain.  This  is  so  well 
established  that  it  may  serve  as  a  reason  for 
re-examination  of  the  cases  in  which,  in  the  past, 
there  has  not  been  perfect  relief  of  patients 
with  general  ill  health,  migraine,  dyspepsia, 
headache,  neurasthenia,  insomnia,  melancholy, 
etc.,  probably  due  to  eyestrain.  Not  seldom  the 
change  of  axis  found  to  exist  when  the  refrac- 
tion test  is  made  with  the  head  accurately  erect 

192 


RIGHTEYEDNESS  AND  LEFTEYEDNESS 

will  at  once  bring  astonishing  and  brilliant  re- 
lief in  many  forms  of  inveterate  systemic  func- 
tional disease.* 

POSTSCEIPT. 

After  the  foregoing  paper  had  been  read  at 
Atlantic  City,  Dr.  Peter  N.  Callan  said  to  me 
that  the  suggestion  of  righteyedness  had  also 
come  to  him,  and  he  had  asked  the  question  in 
the  Medical  Record  of  April  2,  1881.  Con- 
firmation of  the  fact  had  been  found  in  the 
examination  of  the  records  of  more  than  1,000 
of  the  private  patients  of  Dr.  H.  D.  Noyes  in 
whom  each  eye  had  been  carefully  examined 
and  the  vision  and  refraction  noted.  The  gen- 
eral results  were  that  when  myopia  existed  there 


*  A  corollary  of  the  discovery  of  the  cause  of  so  many  cases 
of  tilted  heads  is  suggested.  Beside  the  thousand  vertical 
and  horizontal  objects  that  demand  relief  of  astigmatism,  or 
its  placing  at  axes  90°  or  180°,  the  predominant  cause  in 
civilization  is  the  shape  of  the  letters  of  the  printed  page. 
As  a  rule,  these  are  made  up  chiefly  of  lines  at  axis  90°, 
supplemented  by  a  few  at  180°,  and  a  less  number  of  curves 
and  of  oblique  axes,  at  about  60°  or  70°,  or,  conversely,  at  120° 
or  130°.  It  is  these  last  vphich  should  be  eliminated  when 
it  is  possible,  and  in  all  but  a  few  letters  this  is  possible, 
the  exceptions  (K,  V,  X,  Z)  being  relatively  unimportant. 
The  lower  case  of  small  letters  could  be  modified  in  shape  to 
correspond  to  these.  The  lesson  as  to  vertical  and  slanted 
handwriting  at  school  is  equally  plain. 

13  193 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

was  a  higher  degree  in  the  right  than  in  the  left 
eye,  and  when  hyperopia  was  present  there  was 
a  less  degree  in  the  right  than  in  the  left.  In 
the  hyperopia  cases  the  vision  was  more  acute 
in  the  right  than  in  the  left,  and  in  the  myopic 
the  vision  was  almost  the  same  in  each  eye, 
taking  all  degrees  into  consideration.  Dr. 
Callan  drew  the  conclusion  ''that  with  bi- 
nocular vision  we  use  one  eye  more  than  its 
fellow — that  one  being  generally  the  right  eye. ' ' 
This  quick  confirmation  of  the  theory  of  dextro- 
cularity  was  unexpected,  and  suggests  a  number 
of  valuable  and  practical  rules  in  refraction 
work,  in  the  care  of  the  eyes  of  school  children, 
students,  etc. 

There  are  indirectly  further  proofs  of  the 
theory  to  be  found  in  the  ingenious  and  instruc- 
tive paper  of  Dr.  Wheelock  Eider,  on  "Unila- 
teral Winking,"  published  in  Transactions  of 
the  American  Ophthalmological  Society,  1898, 
to  which  my  attention  was  kindly  directed  by 
the  author,  in  the  discussion  of  my  paper,  and 
which  had  also  escaped  my  notice. 


194 


CHAPTER  VII. 


A  patient's  struggle  for  right-eye  function.* 


In  the  May,  1906,  issue  of  American  Medicine 
1  reported  the  case  of  a  patient,  a  physician, 
who  had  suffered  atrociously  for  30  years.  His 
single  disease  had  been  eyestrain,  at  least  up  to 
the  time  when  insane  surgery  had  not  added  its 
possible  of  injury  and  insult  to  the  man's 
already  overgreat  misery.  This  outrage  con- 
sisted in  tearing  out  the  four  healthy  trunks  of 
the  infraorbital  and  supraorbital  nerves.  So 
blunderful  was  the  operator,  qua  surgeon,  that 
he  had  destroyed  the  function  of  the  levator, 
the  motor  nerve  raising  the  right  eyelid,  and 
the  man  had  complete  ptosis  of  this  lid.  As  I 
suggested  in  my  former  report,  one  could  hope 
for  little  relief  when  terrible  eyestrain  and 
surgery  had  done  their  worst.  I  expected  to 
do  so  little  toward  cure,  or  even  relief,  that  I 
thought  the  case  history  at  an  end  and  therefore 
reported  it  as  if  complete.  And,  as  I  said,  one 
of  the  most  hopeless  of  conditions  had  been 


^ 


*  American  Medicine,  April,  1907. 

195 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

needlessly  added  in  the  paralytic  ptosis  of  the 
right  or  dominant  eye.  This,  in  a  righthanded 
man  of  38,  must  prove  a  great  calamity  by  sud- 
denly throwing  into  the  adult  mechanism  of 
dextroexpertness  the  morbid  faculty  of  absolute 
lefteyedness. 

Following  the  wearing  of  spectacles  correct- 
ing the  patient's  ametropia  there  was  such 
great  relief  of  the  pain,  neuralgia,  etc.,  that 
there  was  danger  of  forgetting  the  morbid  left- 
eyedness caused  by  the  ptosis.  Within  a  short 
time  the  complaints  began  returning,  but  they 
were  noticeably  vague.  Every  former  one  had 
greatly  lessened  or  disappeared  but  there  was 
pain  in  the  antrum  and  other  indefinite  trouble 
seemingly  as  unendurable  as  before.  I  begged 
that  the  long  journey  to  visit  me  should  again 
be  made. 

When  the  patient  came  it  was  soon  apparent 
that  the  chief  source  of  the  present  afflictions 
was  that  the  right  eye  was  shut  out  from  its 
normal  function.  The  perfect  proofs  of  this 
were  the  following: 

1.  Although  there  was  only  a  narrow  slit 
between  the  lids  a  glimpse  could  be  obtained  of 
the  book  or  of  more  distant  objects  by  throwing 

196 


A  STRUGGLE  FOR  RIGHT-EYE  FUNCTION 

the  head  far  backward;  the  patient  was  thus 
ignoring  the  sound  left  eye  whose  vision  was 
perfect,  and  he  was  going  about  with  his  head 
bent  back  in  an  extreme  and  torturing  manner 
in  order  to  gain  a  glimpse  of  objects  with  the 
preferred  right  eye. 

2.  To  gain  some  relief  from  the  suffering  in 
the  neck,  etc.,  from  this  most  unnatural  posture, 
the  patient  had  to  bend  the  head  forward  fre- 
quently, and  thus  there  was  an  incessant  rock- 
ing of  the  head  far  backward  and  then  forward. 

3.  Vision  was  decreasing  in  acuteness  in  both 
eyes,  and  both  for  distant  objects  and  in  read- 
ing. Halos  and  dark  spots  in  the  field  of  vision 
were  appearing,  and  worrying  the  patient, 
ocularly  and  mentally. 

4.  The  pupil  of  the  left  eye  was  becoming 
continuously  dilated  and  only  partly  responsive 
to  light  and  accommodation. 

5.  Both  eyes,  especially  as  to  lids  and  con- 
junctiva were  becoming  morbidly  congested  and 
even  inflamed. 

6.  Great  drowsiness,  complaints  of  being 
tired  out,  etc.,  were  growing  worse.  The  mind 
was  incapable  of  work,  and  there  was  a  dull 
and  lethargic  condition  very  noticeable. 

197 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

7.  The  morbid  efforts  to  raise  the  right  lid 
were  wearisome  and  irritating. 

8.  Most  important  of  all  was  the  continual 
shutting  of  the  normal  left  eye  and  with  morbid 
effort,  reading  with  the  right  eye. 

There  was  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that  the 
struggle  for  righteyedness  was  at  the  bottom  of 
all  the  mischief  and  that  unless  the  right  eye 
could  be  got  into  function,  life-wreck  was  im- 
minent. The  traumatic  ptosis  must  be  done 
away  with! 

One  of  our  most  experienced  ophthalmic  sur- 
geons was  consulted,  and  after  thorough  study 
he  refused  to  operate.  He  probably  had  no 
sympathy  with  my  theory  of  righteyedness. 
He  did  not  see  why  the  left  eye  should  not  take 
up  the  sole  function  of  vision,  feared  the  opera- 
tion might  not  be  successful,  etc.  As  I  believed 
the  man's  life  depended  upon  re-establishing  the 
function  of  the  right  eye,  I  took  the  patient  to 
another  surgeon.  Dr.  Geo.  C.  Harlan,  of  Phila- 
delphia. He  consented  to  operate.  Within  a 
week  the  dominancy  of  the  function  of  the  right 
eye  was  restored,  and  at  once  all  the  symptoms 
enumerated  above  disappeared.  From  the  last 
letter  dated  March  11,  1907, 1  quote : 

198 


A  STRUGGLE  FOR  RIGHT-EYE  FUNCTION 

"I  have  been  more  busy  than  in  years,  and  am  in  the 
best  condition.  I  have  no  trouble  now,  and  read  all  that  I 
have  a  chance  to.  The  lid  is  up  for  all  practical  purposes, 
but  for  long-  distance  vision  I  tilt  the  head  backward  a 
little.  If  the  other  eye  were  gone  I  could  get  on  well. 
There  are  no  spots  or  halos  before  the  eyes,  no  cloudiness, 
etc.  I  have  no  pain  except  from  colds,  or  from  sneez- 
ing. The  antrum  trouble  is  well.  I  feel  like  a  king  and 
enjoy  my  work.  You  have  been  the  best  friend  I  ever  had. 
I  am  interested  in  your  fight.  I  am  going  to  read  a  paper 
on  eyestrain  before  the  next  meeting  of  our  State  Medical 
Society." 


199 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


THE    NOMENCLATURE   OF   DEXTRAL,    SINISTRAL,    AND 
ATTENTIONAL  ORGANS   AND  FUNCTIONS.* 


In  the  Popular  Science  Monthly,  August, 
1904  (republished  in  Biographic  Clinics,  Vol. 
III.),  I  made  some  suggestions  as  to  the  nomen- 
clature of  the  organs  and  functions  pertaining 
to  righthandedness,  lefthandedness,  etc.  After 
a  more  extended  study  and  experience  of  the 
subject  I  recognize  that  I  made  some  errors  and 
more  omissions,  and  these  I  may  now  correct. 
The  terms  righthanded  and  lefthanded  are  so 
firmly  fixed  in  the  language,  and  so  recognized 
as  expressing  the  unconscious  choice  and  su- 
perior expertness  of  one  or  the  other  hand  for 
certain  tasks,  that  it  is  useless  to  attempt  put- 
ting them  aside  for  more  accurate  words.  Es- 
tablished usage  and  habit  make  language  and 
govern  the  world.  "Right-handed,"  "left- 
handed,"  etc.,  imply  nothing  of  expertness,  etc., 
literally,  but  usage  has  put  such  meanings  into 
them.      Terms    merely    localizing   the   organs 


Popular  Science  Monthly,  November  1,  1907. 

200 


NOMENCLATURE 


without  added  significance  must  therefore  be 
devised,  e.g.,  dextral,  sinistral,  dextromanual, 
d,extrocular,  and  all  the  rest.  To  extend  the 
idea  of  expertness  to  the  corresponding  organs, 
righteyed,  lefteyed,  rightfooted,  righteared,  etc., 
may  be  used  after  the  analogy  of  righthanded. 
The  words  ambidextral  and  ambidexterity 
should  never  be  used  by  sensible  persons.  No 
one  has  yet  existed  with  two  dextral  hands ;  no 
lefthanded  person  has  ever  been  trained  to  have 
an  equal  proficiency  or  expertness  of  each  hand 
for  all  tasks ;  it  would  be  most  undesirable  and 
wasteful  of  life  to  have  such  equal  expertness ; 
all  or  most  such  attempted  training  results  in 
unhappiness,  confusion,  inexpertness  and  dis- 
ease. The  righthanded,  according  to  the  crazy 
theory,  should  be  trained  to  an  equal  and 
ludicrous  sinistromanual  expertness,  etc.;  the 
violinist  should  bow  or  finger  equally  expertly 
with  each  hand;  the  pianist  play  upon  a  re- 
versed keyboard,  the  base  notes  to  the  right, 
half  the  time ;  soldiers  should  carry  their  guns 
and  swords  half  the  time  in  the  left  hand,  step 
off  with  the  right  foot  first  on  alternate  days ; 
and  all  sewing,  writing,  use  of  the  knife  and 

201 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


fork,  handshaking,  etc.,  done  alternately  with 
the  sinistral  and  the  dextral  hands,  etc. 

As  to  righteyedness,  lefteyedness,  etc.,  there 
is  a  world  of  new  facts  coming  to  light  of  pro- 
found importance,  medically,  surgically,  so- 
cially, and  especially  to  the  person  abnormal  in 
these  respects.  In  practical  ophthalmology, 
''dominance"  of  the  dextral  eye  in  the  right- 
handed,  and  the  preservation  of  it,  or  re-estah- 
lishment  of  it  when  lost  {vice  versa  in  the  case 
of  the  lefthanded),  is  of  vast  import,  possibly 
to  the  life  of  many  individuals.  With  divided 
or  alternate  dominance  one  of  my  patients  was 
constantly  making  mistakes,  confused,  running 
into  objects,  steering  his  automobile  into  col- 
lisions, etc.  (The  tests  are  many  and  easily 
made :  For  instance,  looking  through  the  held- 
up  pencil  or  finger  at  the  opposite  wall,  an 
image,  one  image,  of  the  pencil  is  seen  by  the 
dominant  eye^ — the  dextral,  of  course,  normally, 
in  the  righthanded,  the  sinistral  in  the  left- 
handed.  If  the  dextral  is  the  dominant  eye, 
then  by  putting  something  over  the  left,  the 
image  will  not  be  displaced;  if  the  dextral  eye 
is  shut  off,  the  image  of  the  pencil  will  "jump" 
to  the  right.    If  the  sinistral  is  the  dominant 

202 


NOMENCLATURE 


eye,  the  reverse  will  take  place.)  If  two  images 
are  seen,  tlien  the  person  has  divided  dominance 
or  equidominance,  and  he  is  a  patient,  having 
confusions  of  mind  and  action  which  may  cause 
accidents  at  any  time,  and  which  must  decidedly 
abnormalize  him  in  many  ways.  Probably 
equidominance  is  a  half-way  stage  of  the  change 
from  normal  to  reversed  dominancy.  It  would 
be  better  that  the  righthanded  should  have  the 
sinistral  eye  dominant  {vice  versa  in  the  left- 
handed)  than  that  he  should  have  equidomi- 
nance. I  have  had  four  patients  reaching 
middle  adult  life  who  used  one  hyperopic  eye 
solely  for  distance-vision  {i.e.,  for  objects  over 
about  two  feet  away),  and  the  other  myopic  eye 
solely  for  all  vision  in  reading,  writing,  etc.  Of 
course  the  hyperopic  eye  in  such  cases  (as  in 
one  of  my  patients),  although  the  left  (in  a 
righthanded  person),  must  become  the  dominant 
eye,  because  dominance  has  existence  and  use 
only  in  distance-seeing. 

The  necessity  for  new  terms  to  designate  the 
states  and  functions  of  attention  comes  to  view 
in  the  fact  that  civilization  is  creating  a  new 
sort  of  consciousness  and  attention.  The  old 
psychology  considered  that  attention  or  con- 

203 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 


sciousness  was  to  be  likened  to  the  passing  of 
single  grains  of  sand  through  the  constriction 
of  the  hour-glass.  That  view  was  largely  true, 
because  I  believe  that  attention  is  genetically 
and  chiefly  a  product  of  vision,  and  that  vision 
of  the  older  and  simpler  type  of  eye  and  mind 
was  indeed  that  of  a  continuous  linear  stream 
of  single  images  (objects)  focused  one  after 
another  at  the  macula.  But  the  modern  mind 
(of  the  great  and  rapid  reader,  of  the  musician, 
and  of  men  in  many  trades  and  callings)  is 
learning  to  see  and  know  and  use  many  syn- 
chronous and  co-ordinated  images,  and  streams 
of  images,  both  at  and  away  from  the  macula. 
There  is  a  growth  and  extension  of  the  macular 
region  and  of  its  imaging,  one  may  say,  or  the 
power  of  attention  and  consciousness  is  growing 
more  and  more  able  to  receive,  interpret  and 
control  the  many  streams  (which  is  the  same 
thing  as  the  enlarged  stream  of  sand  grains), 
of  images  focused  in  and  about  the  macula. 
Thus  mental  largeness,  power,  attention  and 
consciousness  are  growing  at  a  great  rate  in 
our  complex  and  differentiating  civilization,  and 
the  old  nomenclature  based  upon  the  hour-glass 
comparison  is  no  longer  adequate.    Especially 

204 


NOMENCLATURE 


if  is  added  the  marvelous  power  of  the  ear,  as 
in  the  musician,  to  receive,  encompass  and  be 
conscious  of  ten,  fifty,  or  even  a  hundred 
streams  of  discrete  synchronous  tones.  The 
following  terms  may  therefore  be  found  useful : 

Righthanded.—PYeferr'mg  the  dextral  hand 
for  the  more  expert  or  intellectual  tasks. 
Whence  righthandedness. 

Lefthanded.—PYeierrmg  the  sinistral  hand 
for  the  same  tasks.    Whence  lefthandedness. 

RigMeyed. — Preferring  the  dextral  eye  as 
the  dominant  one. 

Lefteyed. — Preferring  the  sinistral  eye  as  the 
dominant  one. 

Right  eared. — Preferring  the  dextral  ear  as 
the  one  with  which  to  hear  sounds. 

Lefteared. — Preferring  the  sinistral  ear  with 
which  to  hear. 

RigJitfooted. — Choosing  the  dextral  foot  as 
the  one  to  guide  and  base  action,  from  which 
to  spring  in  beginning  to  march,  in  spading,  etc. 
''Step  off  with  the  left  foot  forward." 

Left  footed. — The  power  is  furnished  and 
governed  by  the  sinistral  foot. 

Right. — Moral,  good,  etc. 

Sinister. — Unlucky,  gloomy,  etc. 

205 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

Dexterity. — Expertness,  agility,  etc. 

Dextrous. — Expert,  agile,  etc. 

Because  of  popular  usage,  the  four  preceding 
may  retain  their  vague  significance  in  common 
speech,  but  not  in  science. 

Dextral. — Pertaining  to  the  organs  on  the 
right  side  of  the  body,  regardless  of  expertness, 
preference,  etc.  When  facing  east  the  dextral 
hand  is  on  the  south  side,  the  sinistral  on  the 
north  side. 

Sinistral. — Pertaining  to  the  organs  on  the 
left  side  of  the  body,  regardless  of  special  pref- 
erence, expertness,  etc. 

Dextrality,  Sinistrality. — The  corresponding 
abstract  qualities,  regardless  of  expertness,  etc. 

Dextrad,  Sinistrad. — Toward  the  dextral  or 
sinistral  side  of  the  body,  respectively. 

Dextromanual,  Sinistromanual. — Pertaining, 
respectively,  to  the  dextral  or  to  the  sinistral 
hand  without  regard  to  expertness,  etc. 

Dextr ocular,  Sinistr ocular.  —  Pertaining  to 
the  eye  on  the  dextral  side,  or  the  sinistral  side, 
respectively,  regardless  of  expertness,  etc. 

Dextropedal,  Sinistropedal. — Pertaining  to 
the  feet,  in  the  same  way. 

Dextraural,  Sinistraural. — Pertaining  to  the 
ears,  in  the  same  way. 

206 


NOMENCLATURE 


Dextrocerebral, Sinistrocerehral. — Located  in 
the  right,  or  the  left,  cerebral  hemisphere,  re- 
spectively. 

Ambidextral,  Ambidexterity. — ^Words  with- 
out significance,  or  existence  in  fact,  ''ghost- 
words,"  which  should  never  be  used. 

Dominant  Eye. — The  eye  which  is  uncon- 
sciously and  preferentially  chosen  to  guide  de- 
cision and  action. 

Divided  Dominance,  or  Equidominant  Eyes. 
— ^With  shared  or  equal  dominance. 

Alternating  Dominance  of  the  Eyes. — Domi- 
nance of  one  eye  at  one  time  or  for  one  function, 
alternating  with  that  of  the  fellow  for  another 
time  or  function. 

Reversed  Dominance. — The  left,  because  of 
ametropia,  disease,  operation,  etc.,  of  the  right, 
becoming  the  dominant  eye  in  the  righthanded ; 
or  vice  versa  in  the  case  of  the  lefthanded. 

Dextroexpertness.  —  Conjoint  and  superior 
expertness  of  the  dextral  sensory  and  muscular 
organs  of  the  body;  the  union  of  righthanded- 
ness,  righteyedness,  rightearedness  and  right- 
footedness.  The  innervational  centers  of  the 
more  expert  organs  are  located  in  the  left  side 
of  the  brain. 

207 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

Sinistroexpertness. — Conjoint  and  superior 
expertness  of  the  sinistral  sensory  and  mus- 
cular organs  of  the  body;  the  union  of  left- 
Iiandedness,  lefteyedness,  leftearedness,  and 
leftfootedness.  The  innervational  centers  of 
the  more  expert  organs  are  located  in  the  right 
half-brain. 

Mixed  Dextro sinistral  Expertness. — Some  of 
the  centers  of  the  more  expert  organs  in  con- 
joint action  are  located  in  one,  and  some  in  the 
opposite  half-brain.  What  was  once  meant  by 
the  really  meaningless  term  "ambidexterity," 
as  applied  only  to  the  hands. 

Trailing  Hand,  "The  Trailer.'^ — In  syn- 
chronous writing  of  both  hands,  that  upon 
which  the  attention,  visual  or  central,  is  not 
fixed. 

Visual  Attention. — That  existing  when  the 
eyes  consciously  observe  a  fixed  or  moving  ob- 
ject ;  during  the  act  central  or  mental  attention 
is  fused  with  it. 

Central  Attention. — The  'imagination,"  or 
mental  remaking,  of  the  image,  by  the  mind  or 
central  mechanism  when  the  peripheral  visual 
attention  is  abrogated. 

Single-stream  Visual  Attention. — That  form 

208 


NOMENCLATURE 


of  visual  attention  existing  when  the  eyes  fol- 
low a  linear  concatenation  of  single  or  unitary 
macular  images  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others. 

Single-stream  Central  Visual  Attention. — 
That  when  the  central  visual  attention,  without 
objectively  forming  images,  follows  the  passing 
of  imagined  single  or  unitary  images  in  single 
file. 

Multiple  Synchronous  Visual  Attention. — 
That  when  the  attention  recognizes  two  or  more 
discrete  sets  of  retinal  images  at  the  same 
time — as  when  the  musician  reads  several  staffs 
of  music-notes,  observes  key-boards  and  pedals, 
the  indications  as  to  stops,  tempo,  expression, 
etc. 

Multiple  Synchronous  Central  Visual  Atten- 
tion.— The  imagining  or  mental  reproduction  of 
multiple  synchronous  visual  trains  without  the 
objectively  formed  images. 

Single-stream  Auditory  Attention.  —  That 
when  a  monotone,  a  sound,  or  concatenation  of 
single  notes  or  sounds,  is  listened  to,  exclusive 
of  others. 

Single-stream  Central  Auditory  Attention. — 
That  without  the  objective  audition. 

Multiple  Synchronous  Auditory  Attention. — 

14  209 


RIGHTHANDEDNESS     AND     LEFTHANDEDNESS 

Two  or  more  synclaronous  tones  or  sounds,  or 
lines  of  such  tones  or  sounds,  are  recognized  by 
consciousness,  as  in  the  case  of  the  orchestra- 
leader  who  gives  attention  to  a  large  number. 

Compound  Synchronous  Attention. — In  this 
the  consciousness  recognizes  and  correlates  or 
combines  multiple  streams  of  synchronous  and 
diverse  stimuli,  visual,  auditory,  etc.  Illus- 
trated by  expert  telegraphers,  locomotive  en- 
gineers, musicians,  etc.,  seeing,  hearing  and 
feeling  consciously  at  one  instant. 


210 


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